"Oh, what have you done?"
A warm blush began to suffuse her face.
"But it was only a baby labarri," she reproached him.
"You told me it was a viperine," he retorted.
She hid her face in her hands, although the pink of flush burned furiously in her ears. Yet he could have sworn, unless it were hysteria, that she was laughing ; and he knew for the first time how really hard was the task he had undertaken to put the ring of another man on her finger. So he deliberately hardened his heart against the beauty and fascination of her, and said bitterly:
"And now, I suppose some of your gentry will shoot me full of holes because I don't know a labarri from a viperine. You might call some of the farm hands down to do it. Or maybe you'd like to take a shot at me yourself."
But she seemed not to
