“It’s not safe,” he grumbled, still inclined to go. “You two alone here, and the old man said to be as rich as a lord!”
“Ay, said to be,” she answered, smiling “As you said you were going ten minutes ago, and you are not gone yet. But——” she rose with a yawn, partly real and partly forced, “you must go now, my lad.”
“But why?” he answered. “When we were just beginning to understand one another.”
“Why?” she answered pertly. “Because father wants to sleep. Because your wife will scratch my eyes out if you don’t. Because I am not going to say another word to-night—whatever I may say to-morrow. And because—it’s my will, my lad. That’s all.”
He muttered his discontent, swinging his hat in his hand, and making eyes at her. But she kept him at arm’s length, and after a moment’s argument she drove him to the door.
“All the same,” he said, when he stood outside, “you had better let me look upstairs.”
But she laughed.
“I dare say you’d like it!” she said; and she shut the door in his face and he heard the great bar that secured it shot into its socket in the thickness of the wall. In a temper not much better than that in which he had left the inn, he groped his way round the house, and up the three steps at the corner of the building. He swore at the dog that it might know who came, and so he passed into the road. Once he looked back at the house, but all was dark. The windows looked the other way.
CHAPTER IX
PUNISHMENT
Anthony Clyne came to a stand before her, and lifted his hat.