Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/157

Rh "No," she said, shrinking. "Why?"

"What the hell are you, then?" he snarled furiously.

"I'm—I'm—a—"

The old nurse, scared by the voice raised beyond discretion, had dragged herself to the door of division between her room and the parlour, and now stood clinging to the door handle.

"She's a lady, young man," said the nurse severely; "and her aunt's a lady of title, and don't you forget it!"

"Forget it," he cried, with a laugh that Jack's wife remembers still; "she's a lady, and she's fooled me this way? I won't forget it, nor she shan't neither! By God, I'll give her something to forget!"

With that he caught the silken tea-gown and Jack's trembling wife in his arms and kissed her more than once. They were horrible kisses, and the man smelt of onions and hair-oil.

"And I loved her—curse her!" he cried, flinging her away, so that she fell against the arm of the chair by the fire.

He went out, slamming both doors. She had softened and bewitched him to the forgiving of