“What do you wish?” she asked, when he seemed to have some difficulty in articulating a sentence.
He was standing gracefully flourishing one hand and trying to manage his suddenly thickened tongue. “It is with regard to the name Nina Stephana,” he said, at last. “May I offer an explanation?”
His words were more courteous than his glances, and Nina, forgetting her caution, said, sharply, “No, I am in a hurry to go to my room. Please let me pass.”
“Nina Stephana,” he continued, in a dense voice; then he paused in order to adjust a trifling difficulty connected with balancing himself.
“Pretty name,” he went on, “brute of husband—stole child.”
Nina was not at all frightened. She became suddenly angry. He would slander that absent husband, would he?
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she snapped at him; “a young man like you to get drunk. What do you suppose will become of you when you are old? Will you let me go by? If you don’t—”
She was furious now, and although his brain was slightly clouded, he took in her meaning. She had said that he was drunk. “Isn’t enough on Merrimac to overcome me,” he muttered. “Pretty girl, but insulting. Must stand still, till apologise,” and one of his hands went weakly wandering in search of hers.
She was so intent upon watching his face that he did manage to seize one hand in his hot grasp, one of the hands that her ’Steban always held—even when he had them against her will—as gently and cautiously as if they were rose-leaves. The drunken scamp!
“Let that go at once,” she said, in a low, furious voice. “If you don’t, I will call my husband and he will knock you down.”