“Do you think I would stay?” he answered, scornfully.
Mrs. Temple made no answer; she stood there looking at him, and a strange revulsion of feeling swept through her breast.
“I—I do not want to drive you away,” she said.
“Yet you have done so,” answered John Temple, looking up at her, for he was kneeling on the ground, packing his portmanteau. “But for you this never would have happened.”
Mrs. Temple’s tall form swayed restlessly, and her pale, handsome face quivered.
“I hated to think,” she said, with sudden passion, “of your degrading yourself so.”
“I have not done so,” replied John Temple, rising to his feet and looking at her steadily.
“You have! This girl should have been nothing to you, nothing! And if in some hour of madness you had been betrayed into any folly, if you had trusted me I would have helped you if I could.”
“I have been betrayed into nothing,” answered John, coldly; “whatever I have done is by my own will.”