"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!"
And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in:
"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours, as she seems to be."
But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try to rescue her.
"That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know just where I stand!"
The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd find it hard to be in a better place."
Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.
"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the noon train from the Gare Montparnasse."
But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss Desprey said:
"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so splendid at first! I was so happy—until he asked all about you, and then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You ought to thank him, Dan."