“Are you QUITE mad?” she said.
“Not quite,” he answered; “only three parts—but I am beyond my own control. That is the best proof of what has happened to me. You are an arrogant piece and you would defy me if you stood alone, but you don’t, and, by the Lord! I have reached a point where I will make use of every lever I can lay my hand on—yourself, Rosalie, Ughtred, Ffolliott— the whole lot of you!”
The thing which was hardest upon her was her knowledge of her own strength—of what she might have allowed herself of flaming words and instant action—but for the memory of Rosy’s ghastly little face, as it had looked when she cried out, “You must not think of me. Betty, go home—go home!” She held the white desperation of it before her mental vision and answered him even with a certain interested deliberateness.
“Do you know,” she inquired, “that you are talking to me as though you were the villain in the melodrama?”
“There is an advantage in that,” he answered, with an unholy smile. “If you repeat what I say, people will only think that you are indulging in hysterical exaggeration. They don’t believe in the existence of melodrama in these days.”
The cynical, absolute knowledge of this revealed so much that nerve was required to face it with steadiness.
“True,” she commented. “Now I think I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he burst forth. “You have spent your life standing on a golden pedestal, being kowtowed to, and you imagine yourself immune from difficulties because you think you can pay your way out of anything. But you will find that you cannot pay your way out of this—or rather you cannot pay Rosalie’s way out of it.”
“I shall not try. Go on,” said the girl. “What I do not understand, you must explain to me. Don’t leave anything unsaid.”
“Good God, what a woman you are!” he cried out bitterly. He had never seen such beauty in his life as he saw in her as she stood with her straight young body flat against the tree. It was not a matter of deep colour of eye, or high spirit of profile—but of something which burned him. Still as she was, she looked like a flame. She made him feel old and body-worn, and all the more senselessly furious.
“I believe you hate me,” he raged. “And I may thank my wife for that.” Then he lost himself entirely. “Why cannot you behave well to me? If you will behave well to me, Rosalie shall go her own way. If you even looked at me as you look at other men—but you do not. There is always something under your lashes which watches me as if I were a wild beast you were studying. Don’t fancy yourself a dompteuse. I am not your man. I swear to you that you don’t know what you are dealing with. I swear to you that if you play this game with me I will drag you two down if I drag myself with you. I have nothing much to lose. You and your sister have everything.”
“Go on,” Betty said briefly.
“Go on! Yes, I will go on. Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold in the hollow of my hand. As for you—do you know that people are beginning to discuss you? Gossip is easily stirred in the country, where people are so bored that they chatter in self-defence. I have been considered a bad lot. I have become curiously attached to my sister-in-law. I am seen hanging about her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together. An American young woman is not like an English girl—she is used to seeing the marriage ceremony juggled with. There’s a trifle of prejudice against such young women when they are too rich and too handsome. Don’t look at me like that!” he burst forth, with maddened sharpness, “I won’t have it!”
The girl was regarding him with the expression he most resented—the reflection of a normal person watching an abnormal one, and studying his abnormality.
“Do you know that you are raving?” she said, with quiet curiosity—”raving?”
Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he touched his forehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his hand actually shook.
“Yes,” he answered, panting, “but ‘ware my ravings! They mean what they say.”
“You do yourself an injury when you give way to them”— steadily, even with a touch of slow significance—”a physical injury. I have noticed that more than once.”
He sprang to his feet again. Every drop of blood left his face. For a second he looked as if he would strike her. His arm actually flung itself out—and fell.
“You devil!” he gasped. “You count on that? You she-devil!”
She left her tree and stood before him.
“Listen to me,” she said. “You intimate that you have been laying melodramatic plots against me which will injure my good name. That is rubbish. Let us leave it at that. You threaten that you will break Rosy’s heart and take her child from her, you say also that you will wound and hurt my mother to her death and do your worst to ruin an honest man–-“
“And, by God, I will!” he raged. “And you cannot stop me, if–-“
“I do not know whether I can stop you or not, though you may be sure I will try,” she interrupted him, “but that is not what I was going to say.” She drew a step nearer, and there was something in the intensity of her look which fascinated and held him for a moment. She was curiously grave. “Nigel, I believe in certain things you do not believe in. I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them. It is not a new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says, `Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.’ I believe also that the worst—the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think steadily—steadily—only of the best. To you that is merely superstition to be laughed at. That is a matter of opinion. But—don’t go on with this thing—DON’T GO ON WITH IT. Stop and think it over.”
He stared at her furiously—tried to laugh outright, and failed because the look in her eyes was so odd in its strength and stillness.
“You think you can lay some weird spell upon me,” he jeered sardonically.
“No, I don’t,” she answered. “I could not if I would. It is no affair of mine. It is your affair only—and there is nothing weird about it. Don’t go on, I tell you. Think better of it.”
She turned about without further speech, and walked away from him with light swiftness over the marsh. Oddly
