CHAPTER XIX

AN APPOINTMENT

“Oh dear!” cried Bridget, as she clasped the belt round her waist, “how kind you always are to me!”

“I don’t see why you should sigh about that,” answered Colonel Faversham.  “I mean to be kind to you as long as I live, and I hope that will be a good many years yet.  But there’s nothing like tit for tat, you know, Bridget.  Come, now, my darling, I want you to be kind to me.”

“If only you could see into my mind you would say I was a perfect little wretch!” she murmured, taking off the belt and laying it on a table.

“Just as well we can’t do that sort of thing,” said the colonel.  “I never care for women who are too good for human nature’s daily food.  You don’t mind if I light a cigar,” he added, sitting down with caution.

“Oh dear, no,” she returned, and going to the mantelshelf, brought a box of matches, one of which she struck, holding it to the end of his cigar.  When he had lighted it, he captured her wrist with elephantine playfulness.

“Bridget,” he exclaimed, as she laughingly freed herself, “suppose we cut the cackle and get to the bosses.  I think I’ve been patient long enough.”

“I have never imagined that patience was your strong point,” said Bridget.

“Well, well, too much of it makes a man look like a fool,” was the answer, “and besides, to tell the truth, I’m devilish impatient.  Who could look at you and be anything else?  What’s the use of wasting time in this way?  I could fix things up in a week, and never a word to Lawrence or Carrissima till we’re safely out of England.  Come now, when shall we get married?”

For a few moments, while Colonel Faversham sat smoking, she did not answer.  She was standing a few yards away, with her fingers interlocked.  Her breath came and went quickly and her face had lost all its colour.

“It’s no use,” she suddenly exclaimed.  “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not—­why not?” demanded Colonel Faversham.  “Good gracious, my little pet isn’t frightened of me!”

“I think I am,” she faltered.

“What is there to be frightened about?”

“You have always been so kind—­I am going to treat you so horridly——­”

“No, you’re not,” he said.  “You’re going to make me the dearest little wife in the world.  Come, now, Bridget?”

He was too fatuously enamoured to dream that she could be struggling for strength to dismiss him.  Her obvious timidity was ascribed to natural maidenly bashfulness, which made her appear wonderfully enticing.  She clasped her hands more tightly together and turned her head this way and that, glancing at the windows, at the door, as if she longed to run away and make her escape from the man whose chief desire in life was to keep her always by his side.

He saw her moisten her lips and raise her hands for a moment to her forehead.