"Because I'm Vievie's cousin! Well, if you wish to know what I think, I think all Englishmen are simply detestable!" cried the girl, and she sprang up and flounced away, her face crimson with anger.
"You had better go straight to your room," reproved her mother.
The girl promptly dodged the doorway for which she was headed, and veered around to a window, where she turned her back on them and perched herself on the arm of a chair.
Mrs. Gantry sighed profoundly. "A-a-ah! Was ever a mother so tried!
Such temper, such perversity! Her father, all over again!"
"If you'll permit me to offer a suggestion," ventured Lord James, "may it not be that you drive with rather too taut a rein?"
"Too taut! Can you not see? The slightest relaxation, and I should have a runaway."
"But a little freedom to canter? It's this chafing against the bit. So high spirited, you know. I must confess, it's that which I find most charming about her."
"Impossible! You cannot realize."
"Then, too, her candor—one of the rarest and most admirable traits in a woman."
"Simply terrible! That she should fling her—opinion of you in your face!"