"All what?" she asks. She has not removed from his her lustrous eyes, though her lips have turned very white.
"Your perfidy."
"Cyril, explain yourself," she says, in a low, agonized tone, her pallor changing to a deep crimson. And to Cyril hateful certainty appears if possible more certain by reason of this luckless blush.
"Ay, you may well change countenance," he says, with suppressed fury in which keen agony is blended; "have you yet the grace to blush? As to explanation, I scarcely think you can require it; yet, as you demand it, you shall have it. For weeks I have been hearing of you tales in which your name and Trant's were always mingled; but I disregarded them; I madly shut my ears and was deaf to them; I would not believe, until it was too late, until I saw and learned beyond dispute the folly of my faith. I was here last Friday evening!"
"Yes?" calmly, though in her soft eyes a deep well of bitterness has sprung.
"Well, you were there, in that arbor"—pointing to it—"where we"—with a scornful laugh—"so often sat; but then you had a more congenial companion. Trant was with you. He held your hand, he caressed it; he called you his 'darling,' and you allowed it, though indeed why should you not? doubtless it is a customary word from him to you! And then you wept as though your heart, your heart"—contemptuously—"would break. Were you confessing to him your coquetry with me? and perhaps obtaining an easy forgiveness?"
"No, I was not," quietly, though there is immeasurable scorn in her tone.
"No?" slightingly. "For what, then, were you crying?"
"Sir,"—with a first outward sign of indignation,—"I refuse to tell you. By what right do you now ask the question? yesterday, nay, an hour since, I should have felt myself bound to answer any inquiry of yours, but not now. The tie between us, a frail one as it seems to me, is broken; our engagement is at an end: I shall not answer you!"
"Because you dare not," retorts he, fiercely, stung by her manner.