“Well?” he said. While she, poor child, was panting and breathless, he was quite cool and collected. At present he rather enjoyed the sight of the little thing’s tricks and devices, and was amused to watch how far her natural skill, and that intuitive cunning which such a man believes every woman to possess, would carry her. He was a little provoked that she did not follow that impetuous exclamation “Uncle!” with any thing more.
“Well,” he repeated, wooing her, as he hoped, to destruction, “what more? Unless you state your case how am I to find out whether there is any justice in it or not?”
“Uncle,” said Lily, “I did not come to state my case, which would not become me. I came because you objected to me, to hear what you wanted me to do.”
“By Jove!” said Sir Robert, with a laugh; and then he added, “To be so young you are a very cool hand, my dear.”
“How am I a cool hand? I am not cool at all. I am very anxious. It does not matter much to you, Uncle Robert, what you do with me; but,” said Lily, tears springing to her eyes, “it will matter a great deal to me.”
“You little——” He could not find an epithet that suited, so left the adjective by itself, in sheer disability to express himself. He would have said hussy had he been an Englishman. He was tempted to say cutty, being a Scot—innocent epithets enough, both, but sufficient to make that little—— flare up. “You mean,” he said, “I suppose, that you have nothing to do with it, and that the whole affair is in my hands.”
“Yes, uncle, I think it is,” said Lily very sedately.
He looked at her again with another ejaculation on his lips, and then he laughed.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “if that is the case, we can make short work of it—as you are in such a submissive frame of mind and have no will or intentions on your own part.”
Here Lily’s impatient spirit got the better of the hasty impulse of policy which she had taken up by sudden inspiration. “I never said that!” she cried.