Warburton sprang back, his hands applied to his stinging face.
"You drunken wretch, how dare you!"
"Nan, it's only I—" he stammered.
"Nan!" exclaimed the young woman, as her companion joined her. The light from the corner disclosed the speaker's wrathful features, disdainful lips, palpitating nostrils, eyes darting terrible glances. "Nan! Do you think, ruffian, that you are driving serving-maids?"
"Good Lord!" Warburton stepped back still farther; stepped back speechless, benumbed, terror-struck. The woman he was gazing at was anybody in the world but his sister Nancy!
VII
A POLICE AFFAIR
"Officers, arrest this fellow!" commanded the young woman. Her gesture was Didoesque in its wrath.
"That we will, ma'am!" cried one of the policemen, flinging himself from his horse. "So it's you, me gay buck? Thirty days fer you, an' mebbe more. I didn't like yer looks from th' start. You're working some kind of a trick. What complaint, ma'am?"
"Drunkenness and abduction,"—rubbing the burning spot on her cheek.