She, realizing the crisis which had come,
forgetting everything except the imminent danger of losing him
once for all, without time for long explanation or any round-
about seductions, ran forward, laying her hand on his arm and
blurting out:
"But I've refused him."
I do not know what Newhaven thinks now, but I sometimes doubt
whether he would not have been wiser to shake off the detaining
hand, and pursue his lonely way, first into the house, and
ultimately to his aunt's. But (to say nothing of the twenty
thousand a year, which, after all, and be you as romantic as you
may please to be, is not a thing to be sneezed at) Trix's face,
its mingled eagerness and shame, its flushed cheeks and shining
eyes, the piquancy of its unwonted humility, overcame him. He
stopped dead.
"I--I was obliged to give him an--an opportunity," said Miss
Trix, having the grace to stumble a little in her speech. "And--
and it's all your fault."
The war was thus, by happy audacity, carried into Newhaven's own
quarters.
"My fault!" he exclaimed. "My fault that you walk all day with
that curate!"
Then Miss Trix--and let no irrelevant considerations mar the
appreciation of fine acting--dropped her eyes and murmured
softly:
"I--I was so terribly afraid of seeming to expect YOU."
Wherewith she (and not he) ran away lightly up the stairs,
turning just one glance downward as she reached the landing.
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