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n love with her—I want to marry her!" cried Tom Maxwell in a fine fury. "I tell you I hate her, and I hope she may die a miserable, disappointed, cantankerous old maid!"
Striding up and down the floor, his face flaming, his eyes flashing, his very coat-tail quivering with rage—a Bengal tiger, robbed of her young, could not have looked a much more ferocious object. And yet ferocity was not natural to Tom Maxwell—handsome Tom, whose years were only two-and-twenty, and who was hot-headed and fiery, and impetuous as it is in the nature of two-and-twenty to be, but by no means innately savage. But he had just been jilted, jilted in cold blood; so up and down he strode, grinding his teeth vindictively, and fulminating anathema maranathas against his fair deceiver.
"The miserable, heartless jilt! The deceitful, shameless coquette!" burst out Tom, ferociously. "She gave me every encouragement that a woman could give, until she drew me on by her abominable wiles to make a fool of myself; and then she turns round and smiles and puts her handkerchief to her eyes and is 'very sorry,'" mimicking the feminine intonation, "'and never dreamed of such a thing, and will be very happy to be my friend; but for anything further—oh! dear, Mr. Maxwell, pray don't think of it!' Confound her and the whole treacherous sex to which she belongs! But I'm not done with her yet! I'll have revenge as sure as my name is Tom Maxwell!"
"As how?" asked a lazy voice from the sofa. "She's a woman, you know. Being a woman, you can't very well call her out and shoot her, or horsewhip her, or even knock her down. A fellow may feel like that—I often have myself, after being jilted; but still it can't be did. It's an absurd law, I allow, this polite exemption of womankind from condign and just punishment; but it is too late in the day for chaps like you and me to go tilt against popular prejudices."
It was a long speech for Paul Warden, who was far too indolent generally to get beyond monosyllables. He lay stretched at full length on the sofa, languidly smoking the brownest of meerschaums, and dreamily watching the smoke curl and wreath around his head. A genial, good-looking fellow, five years Tom's senior, and remarkably clever in his profession, the law, when not too lazy to exercise it.
Tom Maxwell paused in his excited striding to look in astonishment at the speaker.
"You jilted!" he said, "You! You, Paul Warden, the irresistible!"
"Even so, mon ami. Like measles, and mumps, and tooth-cutting, it's something a man has to go through, willy nilly. I've been jilted and heart-broken some half-dozen times, more or less, and here I am to-night not a ha'penny the worse for it. So go it, Tom my boy! The more you rant and rave now, the sooner the pain will be over. It's nothing when you're used to it. By-the-way," turning his indolent eyes slowly, "is she pretty, Tom?"