“Oh! you’re here—are you?” said Pet, composedly, after her first prolonged stare. “I must say, it shows a great deal of delicacy and politeness on your part to enter a young lady’s sleeping-apartment after this fashion. What new mischief has your patron saint with the cloven foot put you up to now?”
“Saucy as ever, little wasp! You should be careful how you talk now, knowing you are in my power.”
“Should I, indeed? Don’t you think you see me afraid of you, Mr. Garnet? Just fancy me, with my finger in my mouth and my eyes cast down, trembling before any man, much less you! Ha, ha, ha! don’t you hope you may live to see it?”
“It is in my power to make you afraid of me! You are here a captive, beyond all hope of escape—mind, beyond the power of heaven and earth to free you. Say, then, beautiful dragon-fly, radiant little fay, how are you to defy me? Your hour of triumph has passed, though you seem not to know it. You have queened it right royally long enough. My turn has come at last. I have conquered the conqueress, caged the eaglet, tamed the wild queen of the kelpies, won the most beautiful, enchanting, intoxicating fairy that ever inflamed the heart or set on fire the brain of man.”
“Yes—boast!” said Pet, getting up and composedly beginning to twine her curls over her fingers. “But self-praise is no recommendation. If by all those names you mean me, let me tell you not to be too sure even yet. It’s not right to cheer until you are out of the woods, you know, Mr. Garnet; and, really, you’re not such a lady-killer, after all, as you think yourself. You can’t hold fire without burning your fingers, Mr. Garnet, as you’ll find, if you attempt any nonsense with me. So, your honor’s worship, the best thing you can do is, to go off to your boon companions, and mind your own business for the future, and leave me to finish my nap.”
“Sorry to refuse your polite request, Miss Lawless,” he said, with a sneer; “but, really, I cannot leave you to solitude and loneliness, this way. As I have a number of things to talk over with you, and as you have forgotten to ask me to sit down, I think I will just avail myself of a friend’s privilege, and take a seat myself.”
And very nonchalantly the gentleman seated himself beside her on the lounge. Pet sprung up with a rebound, as if she were a ball of India-rubber, or had steel springs in her feet, and confronted him with blazing cheeks and flashing eyes.
“You hateful, disagreeable, yellow old ogre,” she burst out with; “keep the seat to yourself, then, if you want it, but don’t dare to come near me again! Don’t dare, I say!” And she stamped her foot, passionately, like the little tempest that she was. “It’s dangerous work playing with chain-lightning, Mr. Rozzel Garnet; so be warned in time. I vow to Sam! if I had a broomstick handy, I’d let you know what it is to put a respectable young woman in a rage. You sit beside me, indeed! Faugh! there is pollution in the very air you breathe!”
He turned for an instant, livid with anger; but to lose his temper was not his rôle now, and so gulping down the little draught of her irritating words as best he might, he said:
“Ay! rave, and storm, and flash fire, my little tornado; but it will avail you nothing. You but beat the air with your breath, though, really, I do not know as it is useless, either, for you look so dazzlingly beautiful in your roused wrath, my dear inflammation of the heart, that you make me love you twice as much as ever.”