Gregory’s face hardened. “I’m not sure she’d mind. Anyway, Miss Ismay doesn’t like many things I’m in the habit of doing.”
Sally, who had watched him closely, turned away again, but a thrill of exultation ran through her. It had been with dismay she had first heard him speak of his marriage, and she had fled home in an agony of anger and humiliation. That state of mind, however, had not lasted long, and when it became evident that the wedding was postponed indefinitely, she began to wonder whether it was quite impossible that Hawtrey should come back to her. She felt that he belonged to her, although he had never given her any very definite claim on him. She was primitive and passionate, but she was determined, and now that he had done what she had almost expected him to do, she meant to keep him.
“You have fallen out?” she inquired, and contrived to keep the anxiety that she was conscious of out of her voice.
The question, and more particularly the form of it, jarred upon Hawtrey, but he answered it.
“Oh, no,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Sally, you can’t fall out nicely with everybody. Now when we fell out you got delightfully angry—I don’t know whether you were more delightful then or when you graciously agreed to make it up again.” He laughed. “I almost wish I could make you a little angry now.”
Sally had moved nearer him to take a kettle off the stove, and she looked down on him with her eyes shining in the lamplight. She realized that she would have to fight Miss Ismay for the man; but there was this in her favor—that she appealed directly to one side of his nature, as Agatha, even if she had loved him, could not have attracted him.
“Would you?” she asked. “Dare you try?”
“I might if I was tempted sufficiently.”
She leaned upon the table still looking at him mockingly, and she was probably aware that her pose and expression challenged him. Indeed, she could not have failed to recognize the meaning of the sudden tightening of his lips, though she did not in the least shrink from it. She had not the faintest doubt of her ability to keep him at a due distance if it appeared necessary.
“Oh,” she taunted, “you only say things.”