“You’ve lived in the same house with her and talked to her. You swear you don’t love her? What? Has Elsa’s little figure come between?”
His tone was full of scorn. He seemed angry with me, not for presuming to love his wife (nay, he would not believe that), but for being so blind as not to love Marie.
“I didn’t love her!” I answered, with a frown on my face and slow words.
“You have never felt attracted to her?”
I did not answer that question. I sat frowning in silence till the duke spoke again, in a low hoarse whisper:
“And she? What says she to you?”
I looked up with a start, and met his searching wrathful gaze. I shook my head; his question was new to me—new and disturbing.
“I don’t know,” said I; and on that we sat in silence for many moments.
Then he rose abruptly and stood beside me.
“Mr. Aycon,” he said, in the smoother tones in which he had begun our curious interview, “I came near a little while ago to doing a ruffianly thing, of a sort I am not wont to do. We must fight out our quarrel in the proper way. Have you any friends in the neighborhood?”