Still he was grave and immovable. Her persiflage had no more power to charm, her ridicule to annoy, than her beauty had power to please him. It was all silly chatter; and he wondered at himself as he remembered the time when he preferred the nonsense, occasionally adulterated by slang and invariably spiced with spite, which she had talked then and always, to any words of wit or wisdom. She still watched him, under cover of her light manner, narrowly.
"You know as well as I do what is the ordinary amount of truth in public rumour, Mrs. Hammond. But you must excuse me for again reminding you that I am here at your request, and that you summoned me hither with some purpose. It was not to talk of my affairs and prospects, I presume."
He spoke the last words in a harsh and angry voice involuntarily. Anger against her, and something very like hatred of her, were strong within him, and grew stronger rapidly. He looked at her careless face; he marked her sensuous soignée beauty; and he remembered the fair woman whom he had seen struck down by her merciless hand in the dawn of her innocent happiness, in the pride of her hope and love. He would make her say her say, and leave her, or he would leave her with it unsaid; he was sorry he had come. What could this woman do but harm to any one; to him, and to her most of all?
"No, Colonel Alsager,--I beg your pardon, Sir Laurence,--I cannot always remember how times are changed, you see,--it was not. It was for a purpose which you may think a little less welcome, and perhaps even more trifling; it was to talk to you--of myself."
"Of yourself, Mrs. Hammond! What can you have to say of yourself that I ought to hear, or you to speak?"
"Much," she said vehemently; and in a moment her manner changed. He had a perfectly distinct recollection of her on the last two occasions when he and she had spoken together, especially on the last, when she openly defied him; when she had declared that she still loved him; when she had furnished him with the clue to her conduct which he had unravelled for Lady Mitford's enlightenment; when she had said, "I will break her heart, and then I will spoil her name."
Had she done so? had this woman fulfilled her threat? Very nearly; she had almost broken Georgie's heart, and she would certainly ruin her reputation if he--Laurence Alsager--did not resolutely withdraw, and deprive her of any pretext for slander. And so it had come to this: the woman he had undertaken to defend, for whose sake he had foregone so much pleasure and neglected so much duty, could be saved only by his absence! He knew that Laura was "talked of," and therefore persons unskilled in the science of society might suppose that she could not do much harm by talking of another woman; but Alsager was an adept, and he knew that a stone will bruise and maim, and even kill, if well-aimed and sufficiently heavy, though the hand that throws it be ever so much stained with sin. He feared--he feared exceedingly for the woman he loved, and whom this she-devil hated. He noted the change in Laura's manner before she spoke, and he feared still more.
"I have much to say, and I will say it," she went on vehemently; "and you shall listen to me! What! am I to have won at last, and at the end of such deception and slavery, the reward I have done all and suffered all for, and then am I to keep a decorous silence, and see it all made waste and worthless? Don't look at me in that grave, polite, criticising way, Laurence, or you will drive me mad!"
Something of menace and something of appeal in her manner, a startling energy in her gesture, and the hoarse intensity of her voice, threw Alsager off his guard; this was so totally new to him. He had seen her in many moods, but never in one like this. Tenderness, coquetry, a mock gust of passion, all the tricks of fence of the most finished flirt he had seen her play, and he had found them out--perhaps she had never really deceived even when she had most completely fascinated him; but he had never seen her thus, he thought, and he was right. She was in earnest; he was about to understand her fully now. She had risen impetuously from her seat, and approached him, and he had risen also; so they stood confronting each other. There was nothing artificial in the expressive grace of her attitude; her figure was perfect, and she was graceful always--never more so than now, when she was carried away into a forgetfulness of her own beauty, which, if it had been habitual, would have made Laura Hammond irresistible. Her eyes flashed, and her smooth brow reddened; but her beauty gained by every subtle change of expression, as she poured out a torrent of impetuous words.
"Did you think I had forgotten our last meeting and our last parting? Did you think I had forgotten the words you spoke then, and those with which I answered them? Did you think the past was all blotted out, and those three horrid years were gone like an ugly dream; those years during which you banished yourself for love of me,--yes, Sir Laurence Alsager, for me,--you cannot deny it, you can't take that from me, you can't transfer that jewel to her crown of triumph,--ay, start and stare; I know it all, you see,--and then came back to torture me by indifference, by neglect, by preference of another--and what another! my God! that made it a thousand times worse--before my face! What do you take me for that you think I would endure this, and when the time came for speech keep silence!"