“You must not be offended with me, Captain Stuart, if I say that with regard to Beppo Polda you are also very unfair!”
“If you think me prejudiced and unfair, it’s no use my saying what I meant to say,” he said coldly.
“You can say anything you like to me,” said Lily impulsively. “After all, where’s the good of our being friends if we can’t say what we like to one another!”
And then, to her surprise, Angus Stuart burst out: “Of course, I know that Popeau thinks I’m jealous. Frenchmen are like that. But I’m not jealous—at least, I hope not! It’s your true interest, and that alone, that I have at heart.”
“I never thought you were jealous,” said Lily. Then she rather wondered at herself—she was generally a very truthful girl—for saying such a thing.
He turned to her: “You may not have thought so, but—I’m not going to lie—and it’s true that I’m very, very jealous! I’m jealous of Beppo Polda—I’m jealous of your being fond of him—but far, far stronger than my jealousy, is my fear that you, Miss Fairfield——”
He hesitated, and she said in a low tone: “What is it you’re afraid of?”
“I’m afraid that you may be cajoled into making a very unhappy marriage,” he blurted out.
“I don’t know why you should think such a thing.” Lily spoke in a hesitating, troubled voice.
“It’s clear to me—as clear to me as it is to Popeau, who is a shrewder man than I am—that those people, the Count and Countess Polda, want you to become their son’s wife.”