"Why do you avoid me, Mrs. Carrington? What have I done to be tabooed as I have been for the last two days? Have I offended you in any way?"
"Offended me?" I stammer (when people are unexpectedly asked an obnoxious question, what would they do if they could not repeat their questioner's last words?). "Of course you have not offended me. How could you? What can have put such a ridiculous idea into your head?"
"Your own conduct. Do you think I have not seen, and felt, your changed manner?" He is speaking almost in an undertone. "Were I your greatest enemy, you could not treat me with more distant coolness. You scarcely deign to speak to me; your eyes carefully avoid mine, you hardly answer when I address you. Surely you must have a motive for all this."
"In the first place, I do not acknowledge your 'this'. You only imagine my manner changed. I certainly hare no motive for being rude to you."
"Then I think you have treated me very cruelly—very capriciously, considering all things."
The last words are barely distinct; he is evidently using great self-control; but, in my present nervous state, all sounds are very clear to me.
"What things, Sir Mark?" I demand, with an irrepressible touch of hauteur. He is looking steadily at me—so steadily that, in spite of myself, to my mortification and disgust, I feel I am blushing furiously. Still I hold my ground; I absolutely decline to let my eyes fall before his.
"I suppose," says Sir Mark, very quietly still, "when a woman has led a man on to love her until he is mad enough to lose his head, and imagine he has awakened in her mind some faint interest in himself, she is not to be held responsible for any mischief that may come of it. I say I suppose not. But it is, perhaps, a little hard on the man."
"I do not understand you," I say, with as much calmness as I can summon, though, in truth, I am horribly frightened, and can feel my heart beating heavily against my side.
"Do you not?" exclaims he, with a rapid vehement change of tone. "Then I shall explain. I am not so blind but I can see now all that has been happening here during the past month. Were you jealous of Marmaduke? Did you imagine he could love another, when you were ever before him? Did you seek to revenge yourself upon him by turning your sweet looks and sweeter words upon me, by showering upon me all the childish maddening graces of which you are capable, until you stole the very heart out of my body?"