"A word I will never speak!" answered the girl, firmly. "Hear me once for all, Richard Storms. There was a time when you were dear to me as a playfellow, and might have been my life-long friend—"
"Friend!" repeated Storms, with a disdainful fling of the hand. "You might say that much of a hound."
"But now," continued Ruth, desperately, "there is not a thing which creeps the earth that I loath as I do the sight of you."
This was a rash speech, and the most bitter that had ever burned on those young lips. She felt that on the moment, for the man's face turned gray, as if invisible ashes had swept over it. For a while he stood motionless, then his lips parted, and he said, in a deep, hoarse voice, that made her shrink in every nerve, "There is one other sight that shall be yet more loathsome to you!"
Ruth attempted to speak, but her lips clove together. He saw a paleness like his own creeping over her face, and added, with ferocious cruelty, "Shall I tell you what it is? That of your lover—of the man who has stolen you from me—in a criminal's box, with half the county looking on."
If the fiend had intended to say more, he was prevented, for the poor girl sank to the earth, turning a wild look on his face, like a deer that he had shot.
There might have been some relenting in the man's heart, hard as it was, for he partly stooped, as if to lift his victim from the earth; but she shrunk from his touch, and fell into utter insensibility.
CHAPTER XLVII.
NIGHT ON THE BALCONY.