"Pshaw—what contemptible trash they write nowadays!"
"How can you sit here calmly reading," exclaims Dora vehemently, "when we are all so distressed in mind! But I forgot"—with a meaning glance—"you gain by his death; we do not."
"No, you lose," he retorts coolly. "Though, after all, even had things been different, I can't say I think you had much chance at any time."
He smiles insolently at her as he says this. But she pays no heed either to his words or his smile. Her whole soul seems wrapped in one thought, and at last she gives expression to it.
"What have you done with him?" she breaks forth, advancing toward him, as though to compel him to give her an answer to the question that has been torturing her for days past.
"With whom?" he asks coldly. Yet there is a forbidding gleam in his eyes that should have warned her to forbear.
"With Sir Adrian—with your rival, with the man you hate," she cries, her breath coming in little irrepressible gasps. "Dynecourt, I adjure you to speak the truth, and say what has become of him."
"You rave," he says calmly, lifting his eyebrows just a shade, as though in pity for her foolish excitement. "I confess the man was no favorite of mine, and that I can not help being glad of this chance that has presented itself in his extraordinary disappearance of my inheriting his place and title; but really, my dear creature, I know as little of what has become of him, as—I presume—you do yourself."
"You lie!" cries Dora, losing all control over herself. "You have murdered him, to get him out of your path. His death lies at your door."
She points her finger at him as though in condemnation as she utters these words, but still he does not flinch.