Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

'Seriously—deliberately you refuse to accord me the slightest hope?'

'Yes.'

'You think by this bearing to humiliate me as much as a proud girl can do?'

'You pain me now by speaking thus,' she responded more gently.

'And you ruin my life!'

'I think not,' said Maude, with a little curl on her lovely lip.

'And may make that ruin a subject of jest to your brother's fine friends who are coming here in a few days—a few hours, rather, now.'

At this coarse remark Maude accorded him an inquiring stare.

'Oh, I know what young girls are,' he resumed in a half-savage, half-sullen manner. 'A rejection like mine is just the sort of thing they like to boast of.'

'You thus add insult to your profound presumption!' exclaimed Maude, quite exasperated now by the under-breeding of the style he adopted so suddenly; and, sweeping past him, she reached the entrance-hall, where the postal bag lay—a square and stately place, the stone floor of which was covered with soft matting; where in winter a great fire always blazed in the spacious stone fireplace, over which hung a single suit of armour, amid a trophy of weapons, old swords, mauls, and pikes.