"They wouldn't be secret if I were to tell you."
Looking down at her he saw that her words were a happy hit, not the
result of definite knowledge. But she appeared to him vain, egotistical,
grasping, odious.
"Well, I shall give the alarm," she went on; "that is, I will if you
leave me. Is that the way a Southern gentleman treats a lady? Do as I
wish, and I will let you off!"
"You won't let me off from staying with you."
"Is it such a _corvee_? I never heard of such rudeness!" Mrs. Luna
cried. "All the same, I am determined to keep you if I can!"
Ransom felt that she must be in the wrong, and yet superficially she
seemed (and it was quite intolerable) to have right on her side. All
this while Verena's golden voice, with her words indistinct, solicited,
tantalised his ear. The question had evidently got on Mrs. Luna's
nerves; she had reached that point of feminine embroilment when a woman
is perverse for the sake of perversity, and even with a clear vision of
bad consequences.
"You have lost your head," he relieved himself by saying, as he looked
down at her.
"I wish you would go and get me some tea."
"You say that only to embarrass me." He had hardly spoken when a great
sound of applause, the clapping of many hands, and the cry from fifty
throats of "Brava, brava!" floated in and died away. All Ransom's pulses
throbbed, he flung his scruples to the winds, and after remarking to
Mrs. Luna--still with all due ceremony--that he feared he must resign
himself to forfeiting her good opinion, turned his back upon her and
strode away to the open door of the music-room.
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