“Yes?” she said, smiling a little. “You’d——”
“I’ll punch his head and break his neck for him!” growled Selwood. “And—and I wish you’d say if you have reasons why I should. Has—has he annoyed you?”
“No,” answered Peggie. She regarded Selwood steadily for a minute; then she spoke with sudden impulse. “When he was here,” she said, “I mean before he left my uncle, he asked me to marry him.”
Selwood, in spite of himself, could not keep a hot flush from mounting to his cheek.
“And—you?” he said.
“I said no, of course, and he took my answer and went quietly away,” replied Peggie. “And that—that’s why I’m frightened of him.”
“Good heavens! Why?” demanded Selwood. “I don’t understand. Frightened of him because he took his answer, went away quietly, and hasn’t annoyed you since? That—I say, that licks me!”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But, you see, you don’t know him. It’s just because of that—that quiet—that—oh, I don’t quite know how to explain!—that—well, silence—that I’m afraid—yes, literally afraid. There’s something about him that makes me fear. I used to wish that my uncle had never employed him—that he had never come here. And—I’d rather be penniless than that my uncle had ever got him—him!—to witness that will!”
Selwood found no words wherewith to answer this. He did not understand it. Nevertheless he presently found words of another sort.
“All right!” he muttered doggedly. “I’ll watch him—or, I’ll watch that he—that—well, that no harm comes to—you know what I mean, don’t you?”