PART THIRD
I
HE paid his visit of digestion as soon as, with any sort of countenance, he could—he paid it the next afternoon; and when he had gone, Pontycroft accused Ruth of having “flirted outrageously” with him.
Ruth, her head high, repudiated the charge with a great show of resentment. “Flirted? I was civil to him because he is a friend of yours. If you call that flirting, I shall know how to treat him the next time we meet.”
“Brava!” applauded Ponty, gently clapping his hands. Then he knotted their bony fingers round his knees, leaned back lazily, and surveyed her with laughing eyes. “Beauty angered, Innocence righteously indignant! You draw yourself up to the full height of your commanding figure in quite the classic style; your glances flash like fierce Belinda's, when she flew upon the Baron; and I never saw anything so haughty as the elevated perk of your pretty little nosebud. But
How say you? O my dove——
let us not come to blows about a word. I don't know what recondite meanings you may attach to 'flirting'; but when a young woman hangs upon a man's accents, as if his lips were bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair, and responds with her own most animated conversation, and makes her very handsomest eyes at him, and falls one by one into all her most becoming poses, and appears rapt into oblivion of the presence of other people—flirting is what ordinary dictionary-fed English folk call it.”
And he gave his head a jerk of satisfaction, as one whose theorem was driven home.
Ruth tittered—a titter that was an admission of the impeachment. “Well? What would you have?” she asked, with a play of the eyebrows. “I take it for granted that you haven't produced this young man without a purpose, and I have never known you to produce any young man for any purpose except one. So the more briskly I lead him on, the sooner will he come to—to what, if I am not mistaken”—she tilted her chin at an angle of inquiry—“dictionary-fed English folk call the scratch.”
Pontycroft gave his head a shake of disapproval. “No, no; Bertram is too good a chap to be trifled with,” he seriously protested. “You shouldn't lead him on at all, if you mean in the end, according to what seems your incorrigible habit, to put him off.” Ruth's eyebrows arched themselves in an expression of simplicity surprised.