"Then you—you heard the—the conversation over there?"
He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were pretty steady for a drunken man's.
"Well, yes," he repeated, "I reckon—I—heard it."
All her temper blazed up at the deliberate confession. If he had seemed embarrassed or wounded, she would have felt sorry; but this stoicism angered her, as the idea of drunkenness had done—perhaps because each set herself and her feelings aside—I do not know, but that may have been the reason; she was a woman.
"And you deliberately lay there and listened," she burst out wrathfully, "and let us say all sorts of things, no doubt, when it was your place as a gentleman to let us know you were here? I—I would not have taken you for an eavesdropper, Mr. Jack Genesee!" And with this tirade she turned to make her way back through the laurel.
"Here!"
She obeyed the command in his voice, thinking, as she did so, how quick the man was to get on his feet. In a stride he was beside her, his hand outstretched to stop her; but it was not necessary, his tone had done that, and he thrust both hands into the pockets of his hunting coat.
"Stop just where you are for a minute, Miss," he said, looking down at her; "and don't be so infernally quick about making a judge and jury of yourself—and you look just now as if you'd like to be sheriff, too. I make no pretense of being a gentleman of culture, so you can save yourself the trouble of telling me the duty of one. What little polish I ever had has been knocked off in ten years of hill life out here. I'm not used to talking to ladies, and my ways may seem mighty rough to you; but I want you to know I wasn't listening—I would have got away if I could, but I—was paralyzed."
"What?" Her tone was coldly unbelieving.
His manner was collected enough now. He was talking soberly, if rather brusquely; but—that strange look in his face at first? and the eyes that burned as if for the lack of tears?—those were things not yet understood.