Mittie tossed Helen’s arm from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain—while her eyes flashed with the bale-fires of passion.
“How dare you tell me such a falsehood?” she exclaimed, “you little, artful, consummate hypocrite. He never told you this. You have been trying to supplant me from the moment of your arrival, trying to make yourself appear a victim, a saint—a martyr to a sister’s jealous and exciting temper. I have seen it all. I have watched the whole, day after day. I have seen you stealing off to Miss Thusa’s—pretending to love that horrible old woman—only that you might have clandestine meetings with Clinton. And now you are seeking to shake my confidence in his faith and truth, that you may alienate him more completely from me.”
“Oh! Mittie—don’t,” cried Helen, “don’t for Heaven’s sake, talk so dreadfully. You don’t mean what you say. You don’t know what you are doing.”
“I tell you I do know—and you shall know to your cost, you little wolf in lamb’s clothing,” cried Mittie, growing more and more frantic as she yielded to the violence of her passions. “It was not enough, was it, to wind yourself round the young doctor with your subtle, childish ways, till you have made a fool of him with all his wisdom, treating him with a forwardness and familiarity that ought to make you blush at the remembrance—but you must come between me and the only being this side of Heaven I ever cared for? Take care of yourself; get out of my way, for I am growing mad. The sight of you makes me a maniac.”
Helen was indeed terrified at an exhibition of temper so unparalleled. She rose, though her limbs trembled so she could scarcely walk, and took two or three steps towards the door.
“Where are you going?” exclaimed Mittie.
“You told me to leave you,” said Helen, faintly, “and indeed I cannot stay—I ought not to stay, and hear such false and cruel things. I will not stay,” she exclaimed, with a sudden and startling flash of indignation; “I will not stay to be so insulted and trampled on. Let me pass.”
“You shall not go to Clinton.”
“Let me pass, I say,” cried Helen, with a wild vehemence, that contrasted fearfully with her usual gentleness. “I am afraid of you, with such daggers in your tongue.”
She rushed passed Mittie, flew down stairs, into the sitting room, in the presence of her father, step-mother, and Clinton, who was sitting as if perfectly unconscious of the tempest he had roused.