"Take the phaeton, then," said Mrs. Maxwell; "only there will be no place for young Butler; but take a britscha, and order post-horses at Greme's Mill." And now a sharp discussion ensued which road was the shorter, and whether the long hill or the "new cut" was the more severe on the cattle.
"This was most unfair of you," said Maitland to Mrs. Trafford, as they rose from the table; "but it shall not succeed."
"How will you prevent it?" said she, laughing. "What can you do?"
He leaned forward and whispered a few words in her ear, and suddenly her face became scarlet, her eyes flashed passionately, as she said, "This passes the limit of jest, Mr. Maitland."
"Not more than the other would pass the limit of patience," said he; and now, instead of entering the drawing-room, he turned short round and sought his own room.
Mattland was not in the best of tempers when he retired to his room. Whatever the words he had whispered in Alice's ear,--and this history will not record them,--they were a failure. They were even worse than a failure, for they produced an effect directly the opposite to that intended.
"Have I gone too fast?" muttered he; "have I deceived myself? She certainly understood me well in what I said yesterday. She, if anything, gave me a sort of encouragement to speak. She drew away her hand, it is true, but without any show of resentment or anger; a sort of protest, rather, that implied, 'We have not yet come to this.' These home-bred women are hard riddles to read. Had she been French, Spanish, or Italian,--ay, or even one of our own, long conversant with the world of Europe,--I never should have blundered." Such thoughts as these be now threw on paper, in a letter to his friend Caffarelli.
"What a fiasco I have made, _Carlo mio_," said he, "and all from not understanding the nature of these creatures, who have never seen a sunset south of the Alps. I know how little sympathy any fellow meets with from you, if he be only unlucky. I have your face before me,--your eyebrows on the top of your forehead, and your nether lip quivering with malicious drollery, as you cry out, '_Ma perche? perche? perche?_' And I'll tell you why: because I believed that she had hauled down her colors, and there was no need to continue firing.