“That will be seen.”
She opened the door and was on the point of going out when she turned back.
“I believe you dare,” she muttered.
Then she came quickly to my side.
“Do not do it. It will do no good. It will throw him into a passion and he might—might—oh, fly, fly before it is too late.”
She spoke beseechingly and the anger in her voice was fading like the twilight.
“But what interest,” I asked, “can you have in a villain and a coward?”
“None, none,” she replied, “but that such a worm should linger in our house.”
She swept haughtily from the room without so much as a glance behind her. Indeed I was rightly punished. My ungenerous answer had but trampled on her sweet good will. When she went out I felt as if all the light in my life went with her. Bitterly I reproached myself for my folly—nay, worse than folly. But it was now too late to mend. I could, however, carry out my resolution. I could prove that I was not a coward. It was the more easy to do because I had already considered the question of making myself known to the patroon, be the consequences what they might. So, in this state of mind, fresh from the sting of her contempt and full of despair at my own foolishness, I sought the master of the house.