She stopped him with a cold, but queenly gesture.
“Please,” she said, in a low voice, “I am sorry, very sorry, Mr. Bradstone, but it cannot be; I mean that I cannot be your wife.”
“You can’t? You refuse?” he stammered, his small eyes growing red, and an ugly stiffness coming over his mouth.
“I do refuse, as gently, as—as considerately as I can,” said Olivia. “I am grateful to you for the honor——” She stopped. “Oh, let me pass, please, and never, never”—and her dark brows came down straight and majestic as Diana’s—“never speak like this to me again!”
He did not move; but stood regarding her with feverish and sullen resentment.
“That’s not what your father says,” he said.
Olivia looked at him with imperious questioning.
“What do you say?” she said.
“I say that it wasn’t in this way your father heard me,” he answered, sullenly. “He didn’t treat me like this—he consented.”
Her eyes flashed back the retort, and as eloquently as eyes could speak, said: “You lie!”