He laughed as he spoke, angrily, fiercely, and glared down upon her from under his eyelids with a mixture of fury and satisfaction. She pushed her chair back a little with a shiver, drawing away her dress, upon which he had placed his foot.
“If it was as you suppose,” she said, trembling, “what misery you would be planning for me! It makes me cold indeed to think of such cruelty. What! you would put me in such a strait! You would force me into the society of one—Oh, Pat, surely you are doing yourself wrong! You could not be so cruel as that!”
He laughed again, striding across the fireplace, ever encroaching more upon her corner. His face had grown red with wrath. He was not without feeling, such as it was, and this which he supposed his wife’s acknowledgment that his cruel device could indeed wound her, gave himself a start of self-reproach and alarm, though there was pleasure in the power he felt he had acquired of causing pain.
“Ah, I’ve caught you, have I? I’ve caught you at last!” he cried, with a tone of triumph.
“You could not do it!” cried Lady Caroline, her pale face flushed. “No! do not say you made such a cruel plan—no, no!—to entrap the poor woman who is your wife—alas! who never did you harm—to rend her heart in two, and make her life more miserable. No, no! do not tell me you have this cunning as well as—all the rest; do not tell me! You would not do it, you could not do it. There is no such cruelty in man.”
“It’s a satisfaction,” he cried, his face burning and glowing, “to think I have you in my grip, Lady Car.”
She breathed quick and hard, pushed back in her corner, gazing up at him with a look from which a stronger tremor had taken all the timidity. It was some time before she could speak. “Do not think,” she said, “that I am afraid of you. I am only horrified to think—but I might have known. Mr. Erskine, by whom you think you can make me more unhappy, is nothing to me—nothing, nothing at all, nothing at all! He is not the gentleman I thought it right to tell you about—no, no! a very different person. I do not want to see him, because I should not like—old friends to know; but Mr. Erskine is nothing to me—nothing!”
Whether he would have been convinced by the vehemence with which she said this alone, cannot be known—for at that moment the carefully festooned velvet curtains were disturbed in the regulated folds which nobody at Tinto had ever ventured to alter, and Edith suddenly appeared with an anxious and pale countenance. She had heard the raised voices as she approached, and her sister’s “nothing to me, nothing!” had been quite distinct to her as she came in. She could not imagine what it was that could have excited poor Carry so much, and Edith had a nervous dislike of any scene. She could not draw back, having with difficulty sent away the servant who was conducting her punctiliously to her sister’s presence, and she felt herself compelled to face the quarrel, which was evidently a serious one. Edith was fastidious and sensitive, with all the horror of a girl who had never seen anything like domestic contention or the jars of family life. Lord Lindores and his wife had not always agreed since his recent elevation—indeed they had disagreed bitterly and painfully on the most serious questions; but such a thing as a quarrel had been unknown in their household. To Edith it seemed such an offence against good taste and all the courtesies of life, as nothing could excuse—petty and miserable, as well as unhappy and wrong. She was annoyed as well as indignant to be drawn into it thus against her will. Carry had hitherto concealed with all her might from her young sister the state of conflict in which she lived. Her unhappiness she did not hide; but she had managed to keep silent in Edith’s presence, so that the girl had never been an actual witness of the wranglings of the ill-matched pair. But poor Lady Car for once was moved out of her usual precautions. She was too much excited even to remember them. She appealed to her sister at once, hailing her appearance with eagerness, and without pausing to think.
“Edith,” she cried, “you have come in time. Tell Mr. Torrance that Mr. Erskine, who has just come home, was not a—special friend of mine. You can speak, for you know. Mr. Torrance says—he thinks—” here Lady Car came to herself, perceiving the disturbed looks of her sister, and remembering her own past reserve. She paused, and forced herself into a miserable smile. “It is not worth while entering into the story,” she said; “it does not—matter much. It is only a mistake, a—a difference of opinion. You can tell Mr. Torrance—”
“I don’t want any information,” said Torrance, sulkily. He, too, felt embarrassed by the sudden introduction of Edith into the discussion. He moved away from the fire with a rude attempt at civility. Edith, in her youthful absolutism, and want of toleration or even understanding of himself, overawed him a little. She was not, he thought, nearly so aristocratic in appearance as his wife;
