Her tone stung him like the stroke of a whip, and roused a passion on which she had not calculated. He took a few hasty steps toward her; and she found herself prisoned between the precipice on one side, and this man, who stood and looked at her with eyes that gleamed under his frowning brow.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, peremptorily, "that you have no interest in feelings which you have deliberately excited and encouraged? Do you mean to say that you have meant nothing when by every art in your power you have led me on to love you?"
Surely retribution was very heavy upon Marion at that moment. The injustice of the charge—for of any such intention her conscience acquitted her—only added to her sense of angry humiliation, and to the consciousness, which she could not ignore, that she had, in some degree at least, brought this upon herself. Her indignation was so deep, her anger so great, that for once her readiness of speech failed, and she could only reply:
"How dare you address me in this manner?"
He laughed—a short, bitter laugh, not pleasant to hear. "You are a good actor, Miss Lynde," he said. "I never doubted your capacity in that line; but I see that it is even greater than I imagined. How dare I address you with the truth! Why should I not? You have made me believe that you desired nothing more than to hear it. Your manner to me, since the first evening we met, has admitted of but one interpretation—that you wished to excite the feeling I have not hesitated to show you. And so long as I merely showed it, you were pleased; but now that I utter it, you profess an indignation which it is impossible you can feel."
"You are speaking falsely!" cried Marion, whose anger was now so excessive that no words seemed strong enough to express it. "I have never for one instant wished to encourage the feeling of which you speak. I knew you were engaged to Helen, and I thought you something, at least, of a gentleman. I now see that you have no claim whatever to that title. Let me pass!"
"No," he said—and now he extended his hand and caught her wrist in a vise-like grasp. "I have no doubt, from the proficiency you exhibit, that you have played this game before with success; but you shall not have the pleasure of playing it successfully with me. In one way or another, I will make it a costly game to you, unless you tell me that all this affected indignation means nothing, and that if I end my entanglement with Helen, you will marry me."
"Let me go!" said Marion, pale and breathless with passion. "If you were free as air—if you had never been engaged to Helen—I would not think of marrying you! Is that enough?"
"Quite enough," he answered—but still he did not release her wrist. "Now listen to me. I am not a man with whom any woman—not even one so clever as you are—can amuse herself with impunity. I do not mean to be melodramatic; I shall not curse you for your deception, for the heartlessness with which you have sacrificed me to your vanity; but I warn you that you have made an enemy who will leave nothing undone to pay his debt. I read you very thoroughly, beautiful and unscrupulous schemer that you are; and I promise you that in the hour when you think your schemes are nearest success, you will find them defeated by me. To that I pledge myself."
There is something terrible in feeling one's self the object of hatred, even if that hatred be both undeserved and impotent; and, brave as Marion was, proud and defiant as she was, she felt herself shiver under these words, and under the gaze which seconded them. What, indeed, if she had made a mistake on the very threshold of the life in which she had expected to manage so well. What if, instead of making a satisfactory test of her power, she had roused an enmity which even her experience knew to be more powerful and more tireless than love? She did not quail under the fiery gaze bent on her, but her heart sank with a sense of apprehension, of which she was strong enough to give no outward sign.