ut 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?"

"Rather than go I 'd say anything."

"As how, for instance?"

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.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST NIGHT AT TILNEY

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.

"Of course you'll say, '_Meno male_,' resume the action. But it won't
do, Signor Conte, it won't do. She is not like one of your hardened
coquettes on the bank