“Then,” he said coolly, “they’ll put you in a strait waistcoat, my lass, like the madman next door. That’s all! You’re mighty particular, but you forget where you are.”
“You forget that I am a gentlewoman!” she cried. She could not retreat farther, but she looked at him as if she could have killed him. “Stand back, sir, I say!” she continued fiercely. “If you do not——”
“What will you do?” he asked. He enjoyed the situation, but he was not sure how far it would be prudent to push it. If he could contrive to surprise her wrist it would be odd if he could not snatch a kiss; and it was his experience—in his parish—that once fairly kissed, young women came off the high horse, and proved amenable. “What’ll you do,” he continued facetiously, “you silly little prude?”
“Do?” she panted.
“Ay, Miss Dainty Damer, what’ll you do?” with a feigned movement as if to seize her. “You’re not on the highway now, you know! Nor free on bail! Nor is there a parson here!”
There he stopped—a faint, faint sound had fallen on his ear. He looked behind him, and stepped back as if a string drew him. And his face changed marvellously. In the doorway stood, hat in hand, the last person in the world he wished to see there—Captain Clyne.
Clyne did not utter a syllable, but he beckoned to the other to come out to him. And, with a chap-fallen look and a brick-red face, Hornyold complied, and went out. Clyne closed the door on the girl—that she might not hear. And the two men alone in the yard confronted one another, Clyne’s face was dark.
“I overheard your last words, Mr. Hornyold,” he said in a voice low but stern. “And you are mistaken. There is a parson here—who has forgotten that he is a gentleman. It is well for him, very well, that having forgotten that fact he remains a parson.”
Hornyold tried to bluster, tried to face the other down and save the situation. “I don’t understand you!” he said. “What does this mean?” He was the taller man and the bigger, but Clyne’s air of contemptuous mastery made him appear the smaller. “I don’t understand you,” he repeated. “The young lady—I merely came to visit her.”
“The less,” Clyne retorted, cutting him short, “said about her the better! I understand perfectly, sir,” with severity, “if you do not! Perfectly. And I desire you to understand that it is your cloth only that protects you from the punishment you deserve!”