He glanced at her sharply and uneasily, and an angry flush passed over his face.
"What cursed folly have you got in your head? Is it not enough that this fresh danger has come down upon me--"
"Upon us, you mean," she interrupted, calmly.
"Well, upon us, then--but you must get up an injured air, and go on with I don't know what folly? Have done with it; this is no time for womanish nonsense--"
"There is so much womanish nonsense about me! There is such reasonableness in your reproach!"
Again he looked angrily at her, as he walked up and down the room with a quicker step. He was uneasy, amazed at the turn she had taken, at the straying of her attention from the tremendous fact he had revealed; but, above and beyond all this, he was afraid of her.
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and said, "Let it drop, let it drop; let me be as unreasonable as you like, and blame me as much as you please, but be truer to yourself, Harriet, to your own helpful nature, than to yield to such fancies now. This is no time for them. We must look things in the face, and act."
"It is not I, but you, who refuse to look things in the face, Stewart. This woman, whom I do not know, who has not sought my acquaintance, whose name you have not once mentioned before me, but who makes you the confidant of her flirtations and her appointments--she is young and beautiful, is she not?"
"What the devil does it matter whether she is or not?" said Routh, fiercely. "I think you are bent on driving me mad. What has come to you? I don't know you in this new character. I tell you, this woman--"
"Mrs. Bembridge," said Harriet, calmly.