“I presume Miss Ross is the best judge of her own actions,” said he, stiffly.

“Oh, you needn’t be so touchy!” said Grace Thornhill, as she came forth in all the splendor of her bridal array, and at once proceeded to the mirror.  “But I can quite understand your not liking having been treated in that fashion.  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.  Plainly enough she saw them; but she was only half-terrified; she seemed aroused to a sort of whirlwind of passion.

“Oh, say it!” she cried.  “Why don’t you say it?  Do you think I don’t see it in your eyes? ’I hate you!’—­that’s what you want to say; and you haven’t the courage—­you’re a man, and you haven’t the courage!”

That look did not depart from his face; but he stood in silence for a second, as if considering whether he should speak.  His self-control infuriated her all the more.

“Do you think I care?” she exclaimed, with panting breath.  “Do you think I care whether you hate me or not—­whether you go sighing all day after your painted Italian doll?  And do you imagine I want to wear this thing—­that it is for this I will put up with every kind of insult and neglect?  Not I!”

She pulled the bit of india-rubber from her finger; she dragged off the engagement-ring and dashed it on the floor in front of his feet—­while her eyes sparkled with rage, and the cherry-paste hardly concealed the whiteness of her lips.