“Lyle Derwent?”
“Yes. Repeat every word—every word!”
“Why so? You are not acting kindly towards me,” said Olive, trying to resume her wonted dignity, but still speaking in a placable, quiet tone. “My dear Christal, you are younger than I, and have scarcely a right to question me thus.”
“Right! When it comes to that, where is yours? How dare you suffer Lyle Derwent to kneel at your feet? How dare you, I say!”
“Christal—Christal! Hush!”
“I will not! I will speak. I wish every word were a dagger to stab you—wicked, wicked woman! who have come between me and my lover—for he is my lover, and I love him.”
“You love him?”
“You stole him from me—you bewitched him with your vile flatteries. How else could he have turned from me to you?”
And lifting her graceful, majestic height, she looked contemptuously on poor shrinking Olive—ay, as her father—the father of both—had done before. Olive remembered the time well. For a moment a sense of cruel wrong pressed down her compassion, but it rose again. Who was most injured, most unhappy—she, or the young creature who stood before her, shaken by the storm of rage.
She stretched out her hands entreatingly.—“Christal, do listen. Indeed, indeed, I am innocent. I shall never marry that poor boy—never! I have just told him so.”