Then she walked rapidly from the spot, and Norman Wylde and Juliette Ives stood looking at each other with angry eyes.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” she cried indignantly.
“Eavesdropper!” he retorted passionately, forgetting his gentlemanliness in his resentment at her conduct.
“Traitor!” she retorted defiantly, then burst out fiercely: “Call me what names you will, I have borne your trifling until I could bear no more. If you wanted to flirt, why couldn’t you have chosen some one in your own station in life, instead of that miserable tobacco-factory girl?”
He had folded his arms across his chest, and was listening with a sneer to her angry speech. When she paused he answered, in a low yet distinct voice:
“I beg your pardon. It was not flirting, but earnest.”
A sharp remonstrance sprang to her lips, but, without taking any note of it, he continued coldly:
“I had a fancy for you once, Juliette, but it perished when I saw how mean and base you could be to a less fortunate sister woman. I have watched you and your clique, Juliette, and I have been ashamed of you all—ashamed and indignant, and my heart turned away from you to that sweet persecuted girl with a deeper tenderness than it ever felt before. I made up my mind to snap the bonds that held me as your slave, and to win her for my own. But I acted prematurely in declaring my love for her first. You drove me to it with your unwomanly conduct of a little while ago, else I had not been so hasty.”
She stood staring at him with angry incredulity, wondering if he spoke the truth, if he really meant to throw her over for the sake of a girl he had barely known a month.
“What if I refuse to give you your freedom?” she asked harshly.’