Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/210

Rh say to herself, for she lacked practice in this range of incrimination. But she as little said to herself that this could be the truth. "I am not ungrateful," she answered firmly. "But where was it?"

At this, George pushed back his chair. "Where—where? Don't you believe me? Do you want to go and ask him if it 's true? What is the matter with you, anyway? What are you up to? Have you put yourself into my hands, or not?" A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast; he was equally angry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his power which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. "Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don't you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your—your ambiguous position, you are several shades too proud. Don't go back to Roger in a hurry! You are not the immaculate young person you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, my dear; and yet, in the eyes of the world, you have certainly taken up with me. If you are not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora," he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, "I confess I don't understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?"