“Julian!” she cried, rising to her feet.
“Yes, I have!” he went on, leaping up and facing her. “A fine thing to do, isn’t it?” he sneered. “Keep me dangling on your string and all the while accept attentions from a married man! And a blasted Northerner, too! Mighty pleased your father would have been!”
“Julian! You forget yourself!” said Holly, quietly. “You have no right to talk this way to me!”
“It’s you who forget yourself,” he answered, slashing his riding-whip against his boots. “And if I haven’t the right to call you to account I’d like to know who has! Miss Indy’s blind, I reckon, but I’m not!”
Holly’s face had faded to a white mask from which her dark eyes flashed furiously. But her voice, though it trembled, was quiet and cold.
“You’ll beg my pardon, Julian Wayne, for what you’ve said before I’ll speak to you again. Mr. Winthrop has never made love to me in his life.”
She turned toward the door.
“You don’t dare deny, though, that you love him!” cried Julian, roughly.
“I don’t deny it! I won’t deny it!” cried Holly, facing him in a blaze of wrath. “I deny nothing to you. You have no right to know. But if I did love Mr. Winthrop, married though he is, I’d not be ashamed of it. He is at least a gentleman!”
She swept into the house.