"Oh, I thought there was," she said. "Have you finished your horses?"
"No, miss," he replied. "I have the master's hunter and the mare you ride to do yet."
She nodded and went out of the stable, humming one of her songs; but she did not go very far. In five minutes she back again.
"Oh, Pottinger, don't trouble about those letters. I will ride into
Bryndermere myself."
Pottinger was in the mare's stall, and Maude stopped him as he was coming forward, by saying:
"Don't trouble; I'll take the letters from the wallet."
With Stafford's letter amongst her own in her pocket, she went quickly, and yet without apparent hurry, to her own room, sent away her maid on an errand, and slipped the bolt in the door. Rapidly she lit her silver spirit-lamp and heated the water almost to boiling-point, and held the envelope of Stafford's letter over it until the gum was melted and the flap came open. Then she took out the letter, and, throwing herself back in an easy-chair, read it slowly.
At first, as she read, her face burned, then it grew pale, and still paler; every word of the bitter farewell, of the renunciation, written as if with a man's heart's blood, stabbed her and tortured her with the pangs of jealousy. Once she started to her feet, her hands clenched, her head thrown back her eyes flashing; a superb figure—the tigress aroused. At that instant she was minded to take the letter and fling it in Stafford's face, and with it fling back the pledge which he had given her the night before; then she collapsed, as it were, and sank into a chair, dropping the letter and covering her face with her hands. She could not. The strength of her love made her weak as water where that love was concerned. Though her pride called upon her to surrender Stafford, she could not respond to it.
Swaying to and fro, with her eyes covered as if to hide her shame, she tried to tell herself that Stafford's was only a transient fancy for this girl, that it was mere flirtation, a vulgar liaison that she would teach him to forget.
"He shall, he shall!" she cried behind her hands, as if the words were wrung from her in her anguish of wounded pride and rejected love. "I will teach him! There is no art that woman ever used that I will not use—they say I am beautiful: if I am, my beauty shall minister to him as no woman's beauty has ever ministered before. Cold to all the rest of the world, I will be to him a fire which shall warm his life and make it a heaven—It is only because he saw her first: if he had seen me—Oh, curse her, curse her! Last night, while he was talking to me, even while he was kissing me, he was thinking of her. But she shall not have him! She has lost and I have won and I will keep him!"