He rose and pushed back his chair.
"We love each other; why, then, defer our happiness till she shall be of age?"
There was a touch of bluster in his way of asking the question, as though he anticipated some further opposition on Mrs. Jenwyn's part.
Not without a little dismay did that lady learn that matters had gone so far between the young people.
"It is all the fault of my accident," she said to herself. "But for that, I should have had her constantly under my eye, and he would have had no opportunity of meeting her except in my presence, which would not have suited his purpose at all. But the harm is done, and I am driven to my last intrenchment. Oh, Anna, Anna, where are your eyes, that you cannot see through this shallow, selfish pretender--a cad at heart, if ever there was one--who cares no more for you than for the flower in his buttonhole, who seeks you only for your money, and who would break your heart when once he had made you his wife, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning! But you shall be saved in your own despite, my poor darling, even if your foolish little heart should be cracked in the process. There is no help for it--none!"
She had ample time for these and other thoughts while Ormsby crossed to a corner cupboard, from a decanter in which he poured out a "Thimbleful" of neat spirits and drank it off, wondering to himself meanwhile how much longer his unwelcome visitor was going to intrude her presence upon him. But Mrs. Jenwyn had not done with him.
"Sit down in that chair, Mr. Ormsby," she said, as he turned from the cupboard, speaking in a tone so peremptory that he could not repress a start. After staring at her for a second or two, he did as he was told.
It was not the chair he had occupied before, but one drawn up close to the narrow table on the opposite side of which she was seated. Leaning forward, with her arms resting on the table, and her face within a yard of his, she said: "Listen, Guy Ormsby. I have something to say to you, the telling of which you have brought on yourself by your own persistent folly."
Then, after a backward glance, as if to assure herself that the door was really shut, with lowered voice, and eyes which compelled his to confront them whether they would or no, she went on to speak to him for the next five minutes without a break or ever hesitating for a word. It was evident that she spoke from a heart fully charged, and while her utterance was so impressive, that which she had to tell him was of a nature so singular that when she had come to an end Guy might be excused if for a few seconds he felt rather uncertain whether he was standing on his head or his heels.
Various emotions had chased themselves across his face during the telling--simple surprise deepening into wide eyed amazement, and lurking incredulity ripening into a conviction of the truth of what he was being told, which for a little space left his cheeks nearly as bloodless as those of the woman opposite him, whose cold, incisive tones seemed to cut into his consciousness like a surgeon's knife.