CHAPTER XXV
ittoria
sprang up and regarded the intruders like a young lioness. Bunny too rose and stood supporting himself with his hand on the back of the chair. Jasper, the first shock of surprise over, touched Alicia’s arm gently.
“Come with me, I can explain this matter,” he said.
But Alicia paid no heed. She had drawn herself up to her full height and was returning the girl’s stare haughtily. It was the first crisis in life she had been called upon to meet. She came, as she had once told Jasper, of a fighting stock. Instinct compelled her to immediate battle.
Bunny passed his hand rapidly over his forehead and through his curly black hair, and held himself as erect as illness and wound would let him, and kept his eyes proudly on Alicia. But his face was so white and pinched that
