“Well, because I hated you, and also because I pitied you. I said, I’ll get him in my power and punish him—and at the same time teach him.”
“Oh!” exclaimed van Tuiver; and she thought that she detected a note of relief in the word.
“You are glad I don’t mean to marry you,” she said; and when he started to protest, she cut him short with, “You’re not applying the wisdom of your great-uncle! I say I don’t want to marry you, but most likely that’s a device to disarm you, to make you want to marry me.”
In spite of his evident distress, she was incorrigible. “You ought to be up and away,” she declared—“scared out of your wits. I tell you I’m the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. And I mean it literally. I’ll wager that if your great-uncle had ever met my great-aunt, he would not have died a bachelor! Take my advice, and fall ill and leave this party at once.”
“Why should I be afraid of you?” he demanded. “Why shouldn’t I marry you if I want to?”
“What! a poor girl like me?”
“Well, I don’t know. I can afford to marry a poor girl if I feel like it.”
“But—think of the ignominy of being trapped!”
He considered this. “I’m not afraid of that either,” he said. “If you’ve had the wit to do it—and none of the others had——”
“Oh!” she laughed. “Then you’re willing to be hunted!”