"Because I deny your possession of a talent to which you lay claim?" he asked, controlling his voice by an effort. And now his indignation mastered him; he suddenly stood erect and tall before her. Everything in his air and bearing that had bespoken youth and patient gentleness vanished: this was an angry, indignant man. "Let me ask you whom I wooed, the authoress, or Flora Mangold? As Flora Mangold, and only as such, you placed your hand in mine, knowing well that the woman who married me must be my wife, belonging to me alone, and no flickering will-o'-the-wisp of society. You knew this; you took pains to adapt yourself to my desire,—exaggerated pains, for I never should have required my wife to devote herself to cooking cares, as your zeal prompted you to do for a while. No; she was to be my intellectual inspiration, my pride, my sympathetic companion, the light of my household."
He paused for breath, never for an instant averting his indignant gaze from the beautiful woman, who looked mean and pitiable enough as she strove in vain to retain her usual arrogant demeanour and carriage.
"I have followed this change in you, step by step, from the first wayward frown upon your brow to the words that left your lips but a moment ago," he began again. "In the grasp of your own feminine infirmities,—arrogance, vanity, and caprice,—you are unutterably weak; and yet you would play the strong-minded woman, would espouse woman's cause, arrogating for your sex firmness of purpose, calmness of judgment, and strength of will that would usurp every manly prerogative! What I think of your conduct, what my inmost conviction is, whether I am to be happy or utterly wretched, is not the question at present. We have solemnly plighted our troth to each other for life—we are bound. Oh, it has been often enough said of you that you ensnare and play with men's hearts at first to make them a public scorn and mockery in the end! Mine you shall not thus place in the pillory, rely upon that! You are not free: I do not release you. Perjure yourself if you choose: I shall keep my word!"
"Shame upon you!" she cried, beside herself. "Would you drag me to the altar when I tell you that I have long ceased to love you? that at this moment, standing here, I can scarcely control my bitter hatred of you?"
At this terrible outbreak Kitty arose; she had succeeded in gradually withdrawing her hand from Henriette's clasp. She hurried from the room with averted eyes: she could not look in the face the man who had just received what must be his death-blow.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
Twilight already reigned in the hall, which looked towards the north, but in the kitchen the last red gleam from the west played upon the walls and fell upon the red tiled floor.
The dean's widow stood there by the window, washing the tea-cups that had been used. The cook-maid whom she had been obliged to dismiss was to return on the morrow; she had been ill, and the chief household duties were therefore still performed by the old lady. She nodded kindly to Kitty and smiled: not the least suspicion of what was going on behind the opposite broad folding-door disturbed her gentle spirit. The young girl shivered, and hurried past her into the garden.
It had grown very cool. A strong breeze came blowing into her face and over her unprotected shoulders from the river. She ran towards it. Her temperament was sensitive, prone to emotion; the warm blood of youth circled in her veins; cheeks, eyes, her whole frame even to her tingling finger-tips, glowed, aflame with indignant agitation.
It had been terrible, that struggle between two human souls. And the guilty one, who alone was to blame for it, was her sister,—a faithless, frivolous woman, who could lightly bind the tie that should pledge her to a man for life, only to sever it at her wayward will, as if it were the merest summer gossamer floating on the air! This time, indeed, Flora had reckoned falsely: where she had expected to tread beneath her feet a heart subdued to submission by public condemnation and her own systematic ill treatment, she had encountered steel. But what would the firmness and energy with which he defied her avail him? He must succumb——