"And what is there at stake?" asked Eugénie, listening with breathless attention. "Your fortune?"
"More even, my existence as a mine-owner."
"And you will not give way?"
"No."
She looked up at her husband, at the man who, barely three months before, could not endure a "scene" with her, because it affected his "nerves," and who now quietly faced a struggle on which his whole future depended. Was he really the same being? That "No" of his had an iron clang about it; she felt that the most violent threats would extract from him no other answer.
"I fear Hartmann will go all lengths," she returned. "He hates you."
Arthur smiled contemptuously.
"I know it, and the feeling is certainly mutual."
Eugénie thought of the eyes which had flashed so wildly when she pronounced her husband's name up there on the heights, and a sudden terror took possession of her.
"You must not under-estimate that man's hatred. He is terrible in his passions as in his energy."