This was certainly the first time the Major had ever been refused in any of his overtures to her sex, and I believe it surprised him exceedingly. He bent his head, and soon after he went for a walk in the rosery with Lucy Carteret, whom he hates. We always hate those manœuvring, maniéré girls, who are everlastingly flinging bait after us, whether or no we want to nibble; and just in proportion as they fixatrice, and crinoline, and cosmetique to hook us, will leave us to die in the sun when they've once trapped us into the basket.
That night, when Telfer sat down to écarté, Violet was singing in another room, out of which her voice came distinctly to us. I noticed he didn't play quite as well as usual. I don't suppose he could be listening, though, for he doesn't care for music, and still less for the Tressillian.
"Mademoiselle," said De Tintiniac, going up to her afterwards, "you can boast of greater conquests than Orpheus. He only charmed rocks, but you have distracted the two most inveterate joueurs in Europe."
Telfer looked annoyed. Violet laughed. "Pardon me if I doubt your compliment. If you were so kind as to listen to me, I have not enough vanity to think that your opponent would yield to what he would think such immeasurable weakness."
"You are not magnanimous, Miss Tressillian," said Telfer, in a low tone, leaning down over the piano. "You are ceaselessly reminding me of a hasty prejudice, unjustly formed, of which I have told you I am heartily ashamed."
"A hasty prejudice!" repeated Violet. "I beg your pardon, Major Telfer; I think ours is a very strong and lasting enmity, as mutual as it is well founded. Don't contradict me; you know you could have shot me with as little remorse as a partridge."
"But can you never forget," continued Telfer, impatiently, "that my enmity, as you please to term it, was grafted on erroneous opinions and false reports, and will you never credit that when I see myself in the wrong, I am too just to others to continue in it?"
The Tressillian laughed—a mischievous, provoquant laugh. "No, I believe neither in sudden conversions nor sudden friendships. Pray do not trouble yourself to be 'just' to me; you see I did not droop and die under the shadow of your wrath."
"Oh no," said Telfer, with a sardonic twist of his moustaches, "one would not accuse you of too much softness, Miss Tressillian."
She colored, and the pride of her family flashed out of her eyes. The Tressillians are all deucedly proud, and would die sooner than yield an inch. "If by softness you mean weakness, you are right," she said, haughtily. "As I have told you, we never forgive injustice."