There was confusion in the expression of Eolith's shifty black eyes, some embarrassment in the tone of his voice. They were slight; but she saw and understood them. Her heart gave one angry bound under the paper which lay securely in her bosom, but her steady face took no change from the pulsation.
"Sorry I couldn't get back. I got away as soon as I could," said Routh, as he threw aside his coat and put his hat down. Harriet pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down before she answered:
"I am sorry, too, Stewart. I can hardly think any business can have equalled in importance such an occurrence as this."
She put George Dallas's letter into his hand, and eagerly watched him, while with a face convulsed by anger, hatred, and all unholy passions, he read it.
If she could have seen his heart! If she could have read the devilish project that filled it! If she could have seen that in the discovery of the new and urgent danger he had seen, not blind to that danger indeed, but catching at the chance included in it, a means of realizing his atrocious plot against her! If she could have distinguished, amid the surging, passionate thoughts and impulses which raged within him, this one, which each second made more clear:
"This is my opportunity. All is settled, all is right; she and I are safe. I have triumphed, and this cursed letter gives me a better chance than any I could have formed or made. This infernal idiot is always my curse and my dupe; however, he has done me a good turn this time."
If Harriet, watching the changes in her husband's countenance, could have read these thoughts, she might have interpreted aright the ferocity which blazed in his wicked eyes, while a cynical sneer curled his lip, as he flung the letter violently on the floor, starting up from his chair.
Harriet had seen Routh in a passion more than once, though only once had that passion been directed against herself, and she was not a woman, even when its victim, to be frightened by a man's temper. But she was frightened now, really and truly frightened, not, however, by the violence of his rage, but because she did not believe in it. She did not understand his game; she saw he was playing one; why he feigned this fury she could not comprehend, but she knew it was feigned, and she was frightened. Against complicated deception of this kind she was powerless.. She could not oppose successful art to the ingenious skill with which he was courting his own ruin, to save him. She could not disentangle this thought from the confusion in her brain; she felt only its first thrill of conviction, she only shrank from it with swift, sharp, physical pain, when Routh turned upon her with a torrent of angry and fierce reproaches.
"This is your doing," he said, the violence of his simulated anger hurrying his words, and rendering them almost unintelligible. "I owe it to you that this cursed fool has me in his power, if the idiot only finds it out, and knows how to use it, more securely than I ever had him in mine. This is your skill and your wisdom; your caution and your management, is it? Like a fool, I trusted a woman--you were always so sure of yourself, you know, and here's the result. You keep this pretty piece of conviction in your desk, and produce it just in the nick of time. I don't wonder you wanted me home; I don't wonder you were in such a hurry to give me such a proof of your boasted cleverness."
Her clear blue eyes were upon him; his restless black eyes shifted under her gaze, but could not escape it. She did not release him for an instant from that piercing look, which became, with each word he spoke, more and more alight with scorn and power. The steady look maddened him, the feigned passion changed to real rage, the man's evil face paled.