“Do you think that he heard what I said?” she asked anxiously.
“You know as well as I.”
She did not feel in a gentle mood towards Sue; her voice and words had rasped her nerves for the last hour.
“I didn’t intend it for him,” she was half crying, “but father provoked me. He does bother me so. I didn’t flirt with him, I was real good and sisterly. I told him to call me Sister Sue. But after it all, he asked me to marry him, and was as mad as a hornet, and said dreadful things to me when I refused him.”
She nibbled the edge of her book; Tessa had nothing to say.
“I couldn’t help it now, could I?” in a tearful voice.
“You know best.”
“I know I couldn’t. I like him. I can’t help liking him; a cat or a dog would like him. In some things, I like him better than Stacey, and I’m sure I like him better than old John Gesner.”
Tessa opened her book and looked into the handsome face of Flavius Josephus.
“Haven’t you any thing to say to me?”