"You took the pool, you conveyed its contents to your pockets."
"It was adjudged to be mine. But with all possible apologies, Miss Forster, I must decline to discuss the subject with you, especially at such a moment as this. May I take you back to the ballroom?"
He stood up, his face a little flushed; if he thought that she would be overawed by his air of determination, he was mistaken. She also stood up, in such a way that without an actual tussle it would have been impossible for him to escape--that well-screened alcove had its drawbacks.
"You will not leave me, Mr. Tickell, till you have given me certain explanations which I am about to require from you. Sit down."
Nothing could have been more dictatorial than her manner, or more uncalled for; his visage sufficiently expressed the amazement he felt.
"Miss Forster!"
"You have done me a very serious injury, Mr. Tickell, a wrong which no man with any pretensions to decency would do any woman; if you decline to sit down, if you try to leave this place, there'll be a scandal, because I shall follow you into the ballroom, and wring an explanation from you there. I am not friendless; I will take care that you don't leave this house till I have it."
The young gentleman sat down, with every appearance of the most extreme discomfiture. His words came from stammering lips.
"I--I--I never heard such a thing in my life; I--I've done you a wrong? Why, Miss Forster, I never met you before. Of course, I've heard of you, everybody has; as--as to doing you a wrong, I'd no more think of doing you a wrong than--than---- Whatever makes you think I have?"
She resumed her seat beside him with an air that was much more commanding than he had ever seen worn by his colonel.