Severne took no notice of her; he was accustomed to make women cry. He thrust his head out of the window in hopes of seeing a station near, and his whole being was restless as if he would like to jump out.
While he was in this condition of mind and body, the hand he had once kissed so tenderly, and shocked Miss Maitland, passed an envelope over his shoulder, with two lines written on it in pencil:
“If you GO BACK TO HOMBURG, oblige ME BY REMAINING there.”
This demands an explanation; but it shall be brief.
Fanny's shrewd hint, that the money could only be obtained from Mdlle. Klosking, had pierced Zoe through and through. Her mind grasped all that had happened, all that impended, and, wisely declining to try and account for, or reconcile, all the jarring details, she settled, with a woman's broad instinct, that, somehow or other, his going back to Homburg meant going back to Mademoiselle Klosking. Whether that lady would buy him or not, she did not know. But going back to her meant going a journey to see a rival, with consequences illimitable.
She had courage; she had pride; she had jealousy. She resolved to lose her lover, or have him all to herself. Share him she would not, nor even endure the torture of the doubt.
She took an envelope out of her satchel, and with the pencil attached to her chatelaine wrote the fatal words, “If you go back to Homburg, oblige me by remaining there.”
At this moment she was not goaded by pique or any petty feeling. Indeed, his reproach to Fanny had touched her a little, and it was with the tear in her eye she came to the resolution, and handed him that line, which told him she knew her value, and, cost what it might, would part with any man forever rather than share him with the Klosking or any other woman.
Severne took the line, eyed it, realized it, fell back from the window, and dropped into his seat. This gave Zoe a consoling sense of power. She had seen her lover raging and restless, and wanting to jump out, yet now beheld him literally felled with a word from her hand.
He leaned his head in his hand in a sort of broken-down, collapsed, dogged way that moved her pity, though hardly her respect.