"I will not let it be," stormed the admiral. "If a young man thinks he can play fast and loose with a niece of mine, let him try—let him try!"
Here Rosetta, growing really frightened, hastily went out and returned with sherry and biscuits, which she pressed upon Roscoria's acceptance in the midst of his indignant rejoinder to her uncle. Mechanically the young man received the refreshments, and, holding his glass in one hand and taking a fierce bite of his biscuit, he said loudly, and turning toward the lady, "I protest again, Sir John Villiers, that I have not the slightest intention of playing fast and loose with Miss Rosetta, and she knows it as well as I do——"
And the door opened, and Lyndis Villiers was in the midst of them.
Now this time, of course, Roscoria was unnerved, and did nothing but turn very white and set down his glass and look away. Therefore Lyndis, hearing his last speech, seeing him in excited converse with her uncle and her pretty cousin, and eating and drinking as if he were there for the day, harbored a deep suspicion of her lover. There was a painful silence.
Then the admiral began again:
"Lyndis, come here! Do you know Mr. Roscoria?" and Lyndis lifted her clear gray eyes upon Louis and said, "Yes, certainly."
Then Roscoria recovered himself and shook his beloved by the hand, and murmured, "Good-morning, dearest; I am in an awful scrape."
And Rosetta confided to Lyndis that the admiral was past human guidance, and it was to be hoped that Providence would interfere. Of course Lyndis knew nothing of what was toward, and a laborious explanation had to take place, at the end of which the tall, fair Englishwoman looked rather shocked, and murmured something about "unjustifiable liberty," which was directed at Roscoria. He took up the attack by a counter-charge:
"Is it true that you, as the admiral says, are still engaged to Eric Rodda?"