"I only pray you," she continued, "should he seek you, as I fear he may, to be temperate, remembering what you were to each other, what you are in blood." She tried to soothe; had that not been the case, she would have fearlessly spoken all her thought of his treachery.
"Why do you think he will seek me?" he asked, and the eye, ever uncertain in its glance, shrunk from her's. He began to dread a possible meeting.
"Because, because!" she hesitated a moment; then, by an effort over her emotion, added more resolutely, "because he knows all, and Miles is not one silently to pass over wrong to one he once loved and respected."
"Oh, that's it—is it?" Rising, he advanced a step towards the trembling woman; but suddenly paused, and hastily turned round. "What was that?" he exclaimed, looking fixedly at a door behind him, at which Viper had sprung growling.
The study had two doors in it, one leading through the corridor—the one by which Mary had entered; the other leading to a dressing-room, adjoining Marmaduke's bedroom—it was at this one the dog lay growling. "Curse that dog!" he cried angrily, "he makes one fanciful and nervous. Did you hear any thing?"
"Nothing," she rejoined, trembling with a strange tremor.
Marmaduke turned paler too than even he generally was—it was a coward pallor. Reaching a book from the table, he flung it at Viper, who startled, but not cowed, sprung under the table, upsetting the basket as he did so, which contained the torn papers; and then, as his master turned away, he returned again to his post at the door, and commenced scratching and growling at it. Marmaduke uttered a deep oath, and, seizing the animal by the throat, hastily opened the door leading towards the corridor, and flung him out. As he turned his back, a sudden, uncontrollable impulse seized Mary to stoop, and, unseen by him, grasp and conceal a paper which had fallen from the basket as Viper upset it. She felt that any thing written by that man might be of value to Miles; moreover, she saw how he (Marmaduke) had been employed with old papers and parchments, which made the one she held possibly more valuable.
"Now," he said, closing the door, "let us have a few final words, and then leave me; and if we meet again at your seeking, it will be a day of sorrow to you. I wish to do you no injury, for I liked you once—do not mistake," he hastily added, seeing she was about to speak; "I never loved you—no, that was man's right of speech when I said so; we are bound to employ the same weapons others use against ourselves."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean lying and deceit. You never loved me—I never had that feeling for you; you have this evening shown me why you became mine. He had loved you, and then forsook—revenge dictated the act which made you give me a claim to call you mine; dislike to every thing fostering affection for that impostor and base-born hound, made me resolve to win you, and well have I succeeded! False to his affection for you, which you have confessed, and thereby made me doubly glad in having ruined you! false to me, if he so please it, I doubt not. Take back that garden key, woman, how do you know but that this impostor may some day be master here, and you require it for your secret visits to the manor-house? Verily, you love the place! feline in your affections, 'tis the place, not person, you care for!" As he concluded, he drew the deep-drawn breath of a man suffocating with overwhelming thoughts, bursting like deadly missiles from a shell, scattering death around; for, as he discharged them forth, the woman, stricken with shame and sorrow, cowered down, and buried her face in her hands. Marmaduke's deep sigh, as he concluded, was echoed by one still deeper—it was a groan, and came from the doorway leading into the dressing-room; he had but time to turn half round, when a heavy hand was on his arm.