"The devil! get out! Who the deuce are you?"
We both stopped for breath. At that minute up rose the silver moon, and in its tell-tale rays we glared on one another, I and Little Grand.
That silence was sublime: the pause between Beethoven's andante allegro—the second before the Spanish bull rushes upon the torreador.
"You little miserable wretch!" burst out Grand, slowly and terribly; "you little, mean, sneaking, spying, contemptible milksop! I should like to know what you mean by bringing out your ugly phiz at this hour, when you used to be afraid of stirring out for fear of nurse's bogies? And to dare to come lurking after me!"
"After you, Mr. Grandison!" I repeated, with grandiloquence. "Really you put too much importance on your own movements. I came by appointment to meet the Marchioness St. Julian, whom, I presume, as you are well acquainted with her, you know in her real name of Sarah Briggs, and to——"
"Sarah Briggs!—you come by appointment?" stammered Little Grand.
"Yes, sir; if you disbelieve my word of honor, I will condescend to show you my invitation."
"You little ape!" swore Grand, coming back to his previous wrath; "it is a lie, a most abominable, unwarrantable lie! I came by appointment, sir; you did no such thing. Look there!"
And he flaunted before my eyes in the moonlight the fac-simile of my letter, verbatim copy, save that in his Cosmo was put in the stead of Augustus.
"Look there!" said I, giving him mine.