Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/184

 whistled to you, you would be in my arms before the evening."

"I do deny it," says I so fiercely that the blood rushed to my face.

"Of course you do," saye he, "you would not be a woman else. You can lie as handsomely as any. But I'm thinking, my pretty Kate, I should make you a monstrous fine Petruchio."

"Bah!" I cries with monstrous scorn of him, "the boldest rogue outside the pillory, the raggedest beggar outside a ballad, playing Petruchio to my Lady Barbara! Have you blood, boy? have you titles? have you acres?"

"I have a heart, and I have a fist with which to caress and to defend you," says he, with a terrible simple candour that pierced my breast like steel; "and I think I should make you the finest husband in the world. That is if I cared to do so—which I don't!"

Here such an agitation fluttered in my bosom suddenly, that I began to curse my folly for daring to rehearse so dangerous a scene.