People often are deceived in their friends, aren't
they? And there's nothing so horrid as ingratitude. Certainly she ought
to have been grateful to you, considering the fuss you made about
her--the whole company remarked it!"
He did not answer; he did not even look her way; but there was an angry
cloud gathering on his brows.
"No; very ungrateful, I call it," she continued, in the same dangerously
supercilious tone. "You take up some creature you know nothing about and
befriend her, and even make a spectacle of yourself through the way you
run after her, and all at once she says, 'Good-bye? I've had enough of
you'--and that's all the explanation you have!"
"Oh, leave Miss Ross alone, will you?" he said, in accents that might
have warned her.
Perhaps she was unheeding; perhaps she was stung into retort; at all
events, she turned and faced him.
"Leave her alone?" she said, with a flash of defiance in her look. "It
is you who ought to leave her alone! She has cheated you--why should you
show temper? Why should you sulk with every one, simply because an
Italian organ-grinder has shown you what she thinks of you? Oh, I
suppose the heavens must fall, because you've lost your pretty
plaything--that made a laughing-stock of you? You don't even know where
she is--I can tell you!--wandering along in front of the pavement at
Brighton, in a green petticoat and a yellow handkerchief on her head,
and singing to a concertina! That's about it, I should think; and very
likely the seedy swell is waiting for her in their lodgings--waiting for
her to bring the money home!"
Lionel rose; he said not a word; but the pallor of his face and the fire
in his eyes were terrible to see.
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