“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” he answers quietly, “since you will have it so; and when we meet again——”
“We shall never meet again!” she says, abruptly.
“What folly!” he exclaims, impatiently. “I hope we never shall, until you have regained your senses, and don’t act like a mad woman.”
“If I am a mad woman, you are the man who has made me so!” she retorts, impetuously.
“God forgive you for it, for I cannot!” and turning on her heel, she is soon out of view.
He shrugs his shoulders, and forgetting all about her, saunters back to the house whistling an opera bouffe air.
But though the opera bouffe air runs in his head, in his mind there is an unpleasant conviction that Gabrielle will make a scandal of some sort.
“These hot-headed, hot-hearted women are the very devil,” he mutters angrily to himself; “and I should not be surprised if she goes and peaches to old Beranger and her Ladyship—but no matter—a coronet, and a good-looking fellow like myself, to say nothing of the tin my dear miserly old dad hoarded up, are proof against any back-biters, and I’ll marry Zai yet, dear little thing. I do believe she is beginning to love me!”
But even with this comforting reflection, he gives a little start at luncheon when he sees one chair empty, and hears Trixy whisper to her sister, “Gabrielle is so queer to-day, queerer than usual. I really think she’s going off her head.”