But Lawrence stepped back, and his face clouded.
She looked at him in amazement.
"What is this? Can wounded vanity affect you so much?"
"Wounded vanity, madam? Will you forever misunderstand me? How dare you consider me as an accomplice in your odious designs? If I have passed them by in silence, it was no sign that I approved or shared them."
These words were uttered with the force of terrible indignation. The woman to whom they were addressed stood confounded before the speaker, whom she had evidently, up to that moment, believed to be her lover.
"Lawrence—Lawrence! can this be real?" at last broke from her quivering lips.
While speaking, she laid her hand on his arm, but he pushed it off loathingly, as if a reptile had been creeping over him.
At this repulse, all the queenliness of her air fell away, and she seemed to shrink into a smaller person. The anguish so evident in her face appeared to touch his compassion; his features cleared themselves of stormy rage and hardened like marble. He took one of her hands in a firm grasp, and addressed her from that moment in a low, concentrated voice, that thrilled through one as nothing but true feeling can.
"Mrs. Dennison, this is the last time that you and I shall ever converse together."
The woman uttered a low cry, and seized his arm with her disengaged hand. He paused an instant, glanced calmly down at her hand, which clung trembling to his sleeve, and went on:—