"Ah, sir—you see you are so kind, so good! How can I thank you—what can I say?"
George Brudenell, listening, looking, lost his head. He had meant to tell her what he had to tell quietly and coolly, make light of the thanks which only embarrassed him, and so go back soberly to his book and cigar again. But he met her eyes, heard her voice, and the resolve was gone. He never knew what it was that he said to Alexia Boucheafen—in what words he clothed his passion, in what phrases he pleaded. He only knew that she listened for a moment impassively, that the next time the cold blankness of her face was gone, that it was replaced by a look of scorn, incredulity, pity, contempt—he did not know what—that an instant later she had wrenched away the hand he had taken, had burst into a laugh that rang out shrilly in the gloom, and that he was standing alone, bewildered, thinking that her laugh had sounded like an echo of the laugh that he had heard last night in that mysterious house—the laugh of the gray-haired man with the scar upon his cheek.
Alexia Boucheafen, moving with a rapidity unlike her usual slow graceful motion, had rushed into the house and up to her sitting-room. Her brother was there, evidently waiting for her, but he was not waiting for anything like this. She looked at him for a moment, then drew herself into a chair, and shrieked with hysterical laughter. Gustave Boucheafen was cautious. He hurried to the door, shut and locked it, returned and grasped her arm firmly.
"What is this? Control yourself—consider!"
Her wild laughter was already dying away; it was evident that she had to exercise rigid self-control to prevent it from turning to still wilder sobbing. She sat for a few moments with her hands pressed over her eyes, her breast heaving convulsively. When she looked at him, rising as she did so, her eyes dilated and gleamed.
"This night," she said—"this night of all others to choose!"
"To choose for what?"
"To make love to me! Think of it!"
"Bah! What did I tell you but just now?" he returned sullenly, releasing her arm. "You laughed. Fool as he was—tool as you had made him, he was not fool enough for that, you said. Eh—was he not? I knew how it would be. Did I not tell you so before I even entered this house?" Looking at her, he laughed grimly. "What a fool—an idiot!"
"Bah!" she retorted, with a bitter smile. "What, think you, does he know? I could laugh at myself, for I am almost sorry!"