"How can I, you poor little woman?" and he smiled, but sadly, for he thought for one moment of how weak is poor humanity, with the boy Cupid's fingers on one's heartstrings; the next, he determined to heal the wounded heart at his feet—though with the lance.
"Your fancy, will pass, chere madame, and your husband is my friend," and he added in her ear, "you have a man whom you honour with especial favor."
"But why do I?" she said, almost fiercely and starting to a sitting posture, "why, I only admitted him for distraction's sake; you know full well 'twas you I loved and not the man I have married, or the lover you credit me with," she said, in an aggrieved tone, forgetting the years ere she had met him. "I hoped by so doing to drink of the waters of Lethe; but it has not been so, though losing myself at times in a whirl of excitement; your name, your face, with your wonderful eyes, from nearly every album I handled, and I was again in subjection; perchance you had been recalled to my memory by some idle word in the moonlight when I became an iceberg to my companion, and my whole being going out to meet yours, when, for return, an aching loneliness. Listen, my king, my master," and she started to her feet powerfully agitated, every pulse throbbing, Trevalyon stood up quickly, coming to her side, taking her hand in his while one arm supported her, for she trembled.
"Calm yourself, you poor little woman, this passion will soon pass; I shall be away, other men will teach you to forget me, be kind to poor Haughton for my sake (if I may say so) and your own, and now, dear, that your passionate heart is beating slower, let me bring you to the salons ere you are missed."
"Your voice is full of music, else I would not stay so still," and again he feels her tremble for she thinks of the flying moments of her losing game, and of her fierce lover as victor. "But there is no time to be-so sweetly still," and her voice sinks to a whisper, "or else I could be forever so, see, I kneel to you; nay, you must let me be," and the words came brokenly and more passionately than any ever having passed her lips, "you, and you only, have ever had the power to subdue me." Here her face changed to a sickly pallor as of faintness, a tremor ran through her whole frame, and saying in a breathless whisper, "Great heavens! your life is in danger, follow my cue; will you take care of the boy?"
"I will, Mrs. Haughton; pray arise."
While he was speaking, crash, crash, went the plate glass in the window behind him, and black Delrose, looking like a very fiend, bounded in, taking up a bronze statue of Achilles, hurled it at Trevalyon, who only escaped from the fact of having stooped with the utmost apparent sang-froid to pick up a rose his fair companion had dropped from her corsage. Achilles, instead of his head, shattering the greater part of a costly mirrored wall, with ornaments on a Queen Anne mantel-piece.
"This will settle him," he now yelled furiously, and about to fire from, a pocket pistol.
"Hold!" cried Kate, "'twas no love scene."
"By heaven, 'tis well, or he had been a dead man," he said furiously, lowering his arm. "Explain yourself, Trevalyon, or you—"