Part 32 (2/2)
”About Mr. Hescott”--coldly--”yes.”
”What! you don't like him?” questions t.i.ta, abandoning her lounging att.i.tude, and leaning towards him.
”So far as he is concerned,” with increasing coldness, ”I am quite indifferent to him; it is of you I think.”
”Of me! And why of me? Why should you think of me?”
”I hardly know,” somewhat bitterly; ”except that it is perhaps better that _I_ should criticise your conduct than--other people.”
”I don't know what you mean!” says t.i.ta slowly.
Her charming face loses suddenly all its vivacity; she looks a little sad, a little forlorn.
”There is very little to know,” says Rylton hurriedly, touched by her expression.
”But you said--you spoke of my _conduct!”_
”Well, and is there nothing to be said of that? This cousin----” He stops, and then goes on abruptly: ”Why does he call you t.i.tania?”
”Oh, it is an old name for me!” She looks at him, and, leaning back again in her chair, bursts out laughing. She has flung her arms over her head again, and now looks at him from under one of them with a mischievous smile. ”Is _that_ the whole?” says she. ”He used to call me that years ago. He used to say I was like a fairy queen.”
”Used he?”
Rylton's face is untranslatable.
”Yes. I was the smallest child alive, I do believe.” She springs to her feet, and goes up to Rylton in a swaying, graceful little fas.h.i.+on. ”I'm not so very big even _now_, am I?” says she.
Rylton turns his eyes from hers with open determination; he steels his heart against her.
”About this cousin,” he says icily. ”He is the one who used to say you had hands like iron, and a heart like velvet?”
”Yes. _Fancy_ you remembering that!” says t.i.ta, a sudden, quick gleam of pleasure dyeing her pretty cheeks quite red.
”I always remember,” returns Rylton distantly.
His tone is a repulse. The lovely colour fades from her face.
”I'm tired,” says she suddenly, petulantly. She moves to the other end of the room, and, opening a wardrobe, pretends to make some rearrangements with its contents. ”If you have nothing more to say”--with perhaps more honesty than politeness--”I wish you would go away.”
”I _have_ something more to say.” The very nervousness he is feeling makes his tone unnecessarily harsh. ”I object to your extreme intimacy with your cousin.”
t.i.ta drops the dress she has just taken from the wardrobe, and comes back once more into the full light of the lamp. Her barer and slender arms are now hanging straight before her, her fingers interlaced; she looks up at him.
”With _Tom?”_
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