"Yet there was your love-letter to her—I read it with my own eyes!" declares Florence faintly.
"I never wrote Mrs. Talbot a line in my life," says Sir Adrian, more and more puzzled.
"You will tell me next I did not see you kissing her hand in the lime-walk last September?" pursues Florence, flushing hotly with shame and indignation.
"You did not," he declares vehemently. "I swear it. Of what else are you going to accuse me? I never wrote to her, and I never kissed her hand."
"It is better for us to discuss this matter no longer," says Miss Delmaine, rising from her seat. "And for the future I can not—will not—read to you here in the morning. Let us make an end of this false friendship now at once and forever."
She moves toward the door as she speaks, but he, closely following, overtakes her, and, putting his back against the door, so bars her egress.
He has been forbidden exertion of any kind, and now this unusual excitement has brought a color to his wan cheeks and a brilliancy to his eyes. Both these changes in his appearance however only serve to betray the actual weakness to which, ever since his cruel imprisonment, he has been a victim.
Miss Delmaine's heart smites her. She would have reasoned with him, and entreated him to go back again to his lounge, but he interrupts her.
"Florence, do not leave me like this," he pleads in an impassioned tone. "You are laboring under a delusion. Awake from this dream, I implore you, and see things as they really are."
"I am awake, and I do see things as they are," she replies sadly.