The latter's eyes flashed fire, soft and blue though they were. There was no mistaking the tenor of this mode of address. Hawkey Sharpe seemed to have opened the trenches at last, and Maude's first thought was:
'Has he been imbibing too much?'
'It was for your sake I let off that poacher Spens this morning,' said he in a slightly reproachful tone.
'For the sake of his wife and children, I hope, rather.'
'Oh, bother his wife and brats! what are they to me compared with the satisfaction of pleasing you?'
'Mr. Sharpe!' said Maude, drawing back a pace, and, in spite of herself, cresting up her proud little head.
'It seems so hard,' said he, affecting an air of humility, and casting down his eyes for a moment, 'that there should be such a gulf apparently between us, Miss Lindsay.'
'A gulf,' repeated Maude, not precisely knowing what to say.
'Yes—and you deepen it. If I attempt to speak to you even as a friend, you recoil from me; and in this huge, sequestered house, it seems natural that we should at least be friends.'
'If we are enemies, I know it not, Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude with some hesitation, and then attempting to cover the latter by a smile, as she knew the necessity—a knowledge which distressed and disgusted her—of temporizing, which seemed, even if for a moment, a species of treason to Jack Elliot.