"For God's sake answer me!" he says again, in great agitation at a dumbness that seems to him ominous.
Hearing the sharp pain and angry fear in his voice, she hesitates no longer. Lie or no lie, she takes the plunge.
"Nothing!" she says, faintly, turning first milk-white, then red as a rose in her burning prime.
"Why do you turn away your face? Are you quite certain?" he asks, quickly, only half convinced by her weak negation.
"Certain," she replies, indistinctly, as if just able to echo his words, but not to frame any of her own.
"Why do you stammer and blush, then, whenever his name is mentioned?" he asks, with jealous impatience.
"I won't stand being catechised in this way," she cries, blazing out angrily, and stopping short, while sparks of fire, half quenched in tears of vexation, dart from the splendid night of her eyes. "I have answered a question which you ought never to have asked; you must be a person of very little observation," she continues, sharply, "not to have discovered during the three weeks that I have been with you that I blush at everything and nothing; I should be as likely as not to blush when Sir Thomas's name was mentioned, or—or——"
"Or mine," suggests St. John, ironically; "put it as strongly as you can."
"Or yours, if you like," she answers, hardily, but crimsoning painfully meanwhile in confirmation of her words.
At a little distance farther on, their path forsakes the road and leads across a line of grass fields. St. John crosses the first stile, and waits politely on the other side to help Esther over.