"I told you he would reappear here, if at all, only as her husband, or possibly her affianced, did I not?"
Another nod as cool as the first.
"And you turned away in contemptuous unbelief, did you not?"
"Contempt certainly, but unbelief—not entirely."
Elmendorf was fairly trembling with wrath by this time. The idea that this simple, unlettered, friendless "girl of the people" should so coolly brave him—him on whose words enraptured ears were wont to hang, at whose eloquence enthusiastic hundreds burst into applause! It stung him to the very marrow of his conceit. Something must be said or done to bring her to her knees, and, believing that she loved and dearly loved the man in question, he prepared his final coup.
"Well, it may modify your contempt to know that my words have come true."
"That Mr. Forrest was ordered away in disgrace?" she calmly asked.
"Not so much that, as that he has returned, brought back, as I said, by Miss Allison."
"Why, but that is no news at all. I knew he was coming, and I saw them together this morning."
"You—saw them—and you knew he was coming?" faltered the tutor. "You mean to—you mean he writes to you,—that you correspond with him?"