Fairlie bent over a spaniel, rolling the dog backwards and forwards on the rug.
Geraldine stood on the rug, her head on one side in her old pretty attitude of plaintiveness and defiance, the bright sunshine falling round her and playing on her gay dress and fair hair—a tableau lost upon the Colonel, who though he had risen too, was playing sedulously with the dog.
"Colonel Fairlie, what is the matter with you? How unkind you are to-day!"
Fairlie was roused at last, disgusted that so young a girl could be so accomplished a liar and actress, sick at heart that he had been so deceived, mad with jealousy, and that devil in him sent courtesy flying to the winds.
"Pardon me, Miss Vane, you waste your coquetteries on me. Unhappily, I know their value, and am not likely to be duped by them."
Geraldine's face flushed as deep a rose hue as the geraniums nodding their heads in at the windows.
"Coquetteries?—duped? What do you mean?"
"You know well enough what. All I warn you is, never try them again on me—never come near me any more with your innocent smiles and your lying lips, or, by Heaven, Geraldine Vane, I may say what I think of you in plainer words than suit the delicacy of a lady's ears!"
Geraldine's eyes flashed fire; from rose-hued as the geraniums she changed to the dead white of the Guelder roses beside them.
"Colonel Fairlie, you are mad, I think! If you only came here to insult me——"