He never moved an inch.
“Your house!” he sneered. “Well bought at the price; only you left me out of your calculations—you and your confederate.”
She came at him then, this piety, with set teeth and clinched hands. She was like a tigress in that instant. But he waved his arm disdainfully, and she stopped.
“Are you not?” he said. “Then the other’s my sole quarry. I’ll make my terms with him.”
“No, no!”
The cry broke from her instinctively; and, having uttered it, she knew her own surrender. Pale and broken, poor lily, she drooped before him.
“Very well,” he said; “then with you. I care nothing for the deed; the terms are my concern. I’ll not be diffident about them. I’ll justify them, on your invitation, to the utmost of my desire. Your husband, mistress, killed di Rocco.”
“O, my God!”
“Why, he had his provocation. The man meant lewdly, and he knew it—knew of his intent, its method and occasion. Ask him, if you doubt me. Ask him what he was doing that night, crouched hidden by the glacier where the other was to cross. Ask him why he followed in di Rocco’s tracks, down upon the ice and further. Ask him why he returned alone, later, and slunk home in the storm and darkness, the brand of that on his forehead which he’ll never rub out to the end of time. O, believe me, I have a hundred eyes for things that touch my interests. This did, and closely. He murdered di Rocco. Ask him, I say, if you doubt me.”
Her ashy lips moved, but no sound came from them.