“That you are angry with me, cousin Durzil.” But then, as she felt his cold, clear, dark eye how piercingly it dwelt upon her features, reading, or striving to read, her very soul, she continued, seeing at once the necessity of placing him on the defensive, so as to turn the tide of aggressive warfare, “but I am angry with you, I assure you; nor do I think it at all like you, Durzil, or at all like a true cavalier, as you pretend to be, first to keep a lady waiting for you, I don’t know how long, here alone, and then to creep upon her, like an Indian, or a spy, and surprise what little secrets she might be turning over in her own mind. You must have trodden lightly on purpose, or I should have heard your step. I did not look for this at your hand, cousin Durzil.”
He still gazed at her with the same dark, fixed, piercing glance, without answering her a word; and, although conscious of no wrong, she met his gaze with her calm, candid, truthful eye, she could not endure his suspicious look, but was fluttered, and blushed deeply, and was so much embarrassed, that had not pride and anger come to her aid, she would have burst into tears. But they did come to her aid, and she cried with a quivering voice and a flashing eye—
“For what do you look at me so, Durzil? I do not like it—I will not bear it! You have no right to treat me thus! it is not kind, nor courteous, nor even manly! If it be to brow-beat me, and tyrannize over me, that you asked me to meet you here, I could have thanked you to spare me the request. But I shall leave you to yourself, and return home; and so, good-morrow to you, and better breeding, and a better heart, too, cousin Durzil!”
But though she said she was going, she made no movement to do so, but hesitated, waiting for his answer.
“You must be greatly changed, Theresa,” he said bitterly, “to take offence at so slight a cause, or to speak to me in such a tone. But you are greatly changed, and there’s an end of it.”
“I am not changed at all,” replied the girl, still chafing at the recollection of that scrutinizing eye, which she perhaps felt the more, because conscious that her own reply had not been perfectly sincere. “But I do not allow your right to pry meanly into my secret thoughts, or to catechise me concerning my words, or to accuse me of falsehood, when I answer you.”
“Accuse you of falsehood, Theresa! Who ever dreamed of doing so?”
“Your eye did so, sir,” she replied. “When I told you that I was determined ‘not to believe that you were angry with me,’ you fixed your glance upon me with the expression of a pedagogue, who having caught a child lying would terrify it into truth. I am no child, I assure you, Durzil, nor are you yet my master. Think as you may about it.”
It was now Durzil’s turn to be confused, for he could not deny that she had construed the meaning of his look aright; and would not, so proud was he and so resolute, either deny or apologize for what was certainly an act of rudeness.
After a moment’s pause, however, he looked up at her from under downcast eyelids, with a look of defiance mingled with distrust, and answered bluntly,