With a savage gesture he dropped the valise and took her fiercely by the shoulders.
"Where have you hidden my money?" he hissed. "Tell me, or—-"
"Or what?" she asked, smiling into his face in a way that made him lose his grip.
"Or—or I cannot answer for myself," he proceeded, stammering. "Do you. think I can endure everything from you because you are a woman? No; I will have those bills, every one of them, or show myself your master. Where are they, you incarnate fiend?"
It was an unwise word to use, but she did not seem to heed it.
"Ah," she said softly, and with a lingering accent, as if his grasp of her had been a caress to which she was not entirely averse. "I did not think you would discover its loss so soon. When did you go to the woods, Frederick? And was Miss Halliday with you?"
He had a disposition to strike her, but controlled himself. Blows would not avail against the softness of this suave, yet merciless, being. Only a will as strong as her own could hope to cope with this smiling fury; and this he was determined to show, though, alas! he had everything to lose in a struggle that robbed her of nothing but a hope which was but a baseless fabric at best; for he was more than ever determined never to marry her.
"A man does not need to wait long to miss his own," said he. "And if you have taken this money, which, you do not deny, you have shown yourself very short-sighted, for danger lies closer to the person holding this money than to the one you vilify by your threats. This you will find, Amabel, when you come to make use of the weapon with which you have thought to arm yourself."
"Tut, tut!" was her contemptuous reply. "Do you consider me a child? Do
I look like a babbling infant, Frederick?"
Her face, which had been lifted to his in saying this, was so illumined, both by her smile, which was strangely enchanting for one so evil, and by the moonlight, which so etherialises all that it touches, that he found himself forced to recall that other purer, truer face he had left at the honeysuckle porch to keep down a last wild impulse toward her, which would have been his undoing, both in this world and the next, as he knew.