“Suspicion, sir—suspicion!”
“Do not mistake me. I charge you with nothing. On the contrary, I believe it is your very innocence that leads you into the appearance of evil.”
“Evil! evil!”
She sprung to her feet, and confronted him, like a beautiful fury. All her craft, all her cunning forsook her in that storm of temper. In a single moment she was dashing the work of her life into fragments. All this was so different from the honeyed words she had just been listening to from the lips of that bad man, that her true nature broke forth, but not yet in words.
“Still you misunderstand me,” said Claude, grieved and astonished, “and to avoid this I must speak more plainly. This Houston is not a proper associate for any woman, much less for the one who is to share my home. You are young; you are ignorant of the stories afloat about him, or you would not thus persist in wrecking both my happiness and your own.”
The girl had been growing pale with suppressed anger; every fiber in her frame quivered, but still she had a smile upon her lips.
“Pray, Claude, reserve these lectures till you have a right to force them on me.”
“That time will never come, Ellen.”
Claude spoke in sorrow, but firmly.
“Then I am to understand you break our engagement?”