"You shrew!" he chattered. "You infernal little vixen! And I thought--!"
He sprang toward her, beside himself, with a purpose that failed only through the intervention of a third party.
A man swinging suddenly round the end of the hedge shouldered between Lyttleton and the object of his rage--a man whose bulk, in the loose flannels of a lounge suit, seemed double that of Lyttleton.
"Oh, here!" said Trego impatiently, but without raising his voice. "Come, come!" He caught Lyttleton's wrists and forced them down. "Don't be an idiot--as well as a cad. Do you want to rouse the household? If you do, and get kicked out, you'll never get another chance on this island, my friend."
"Damn your impudence!" Lyttleton stuttered, sufficiently recalled to his senses to guard his tone, and wrenched at his wrists. "Let me go! I'll--"
"Sure I'll let you go," Trego agreed cheerfully. "But unless you want a thrashing in the presence of a lady, you'll do nothing foolish."
With this he released Mr. Lyttleton in such wise that he was an instant later picking himself up from the gravel path.
And while he was picking himself up he was also reflecting swiftly, this notwithstanding that Sally was no longer present to be a stay upon their brawling.
If his look was vicious, his tone was subdued as he stood brushing off the dust of his downfall.
"Lucky you came when you did," he said, with an effort to seem composed. "I presume I ought to thank you for knocking me about. This confounded temper of mine will get me into serious trouble yet if I'm not careful. I was driven pretty nearly wild by that little devil--"
"Cut it right there!" Trego interrupted sharply. "I don't know anything about your row--didn't hear a word that passed between you two--and it's none of my business. But if there's any blame to be borne, you'd better shoulder it yourself, for I warn you, I'm not going to hear any woman called names by a pup like you!"
With a mind half distracted, the battlefield of a dozen unhappy emotions of which the most coherent were seething self-reproach and frantic irritation with Trego (why must it have been he, of all men?) Sally inconsiderately left the two to conclude their quarrel without an audience--took to her heels incontinently and sped like a hunted shadow across the open lawn. She flung through the side door and left it wide, stumbled blindly up-stairs to her bedchamber door, and shut this last behind her with no anticipation so fond as that of solitude and freedom to cry her eyes out.