Alice was silent. As she listened to his first words, as the tone in which he spoke fell upon her ear, the scene then passing seemed to fade away, and there arose before her mind, a vision of the river-walk along the banks of the Ouse, just abreast of Bishopthorpe, where in the calm summer evening Arthur Preston had insulted her with his base proposal. Mr. Wetter augured well from this silence, and proceeded more volubly.
'I have known you longer than you imagine,' he said, 'and have admired you from the first instant I set eyes upon you. I was so captivated that I determined at all hazards to make your acquaintance; and when I had done so, I discovered that you were more charming than ever, that I was more hopelessly enslaved. And then came the fierce desire to win you, to take you all to myself, to hold you as my own, my only love.'
She was silent still, her eyes fixed on vacancy, though her lips trembled. Henrich Wetter bent forward and laid his hand upon her fingers as they twitched nervously in her lap. 'Alice,' he whispered, 'do you hear me?'
The touch roused her at once. 'Yes,' she said, quickly withdrawing her hand from his as though she had been stung, and rising from her chair, 'I do hear what pains and grieves me in the highest degree.'
'Pains and grieves you, Alice--'
'My name is Mrs. Claxton, and I desire you will call me by it. Yes, pains and grieves me, Mr. Wetter,' she continued in a breaking voice, and with a sudden abnegation of her dignity: 'it is cruel in you, it is not like a gentleman to speak to me in this way without the slightest encouragement, and within six months of my husband's death.'
Not like a gentleman! That phrase, quietly spoken as it was, and without any attempt at dramatic emphasis, cut Henrich Wetter to the soul. He was not a gentleman by birth or breeding, by nature, or even by education--and he knew it. His life was one long struggle to deceive on this point those with whom he was brought into contact. He was always suspecting that his position as gentleman was being called in question, and often he would sit with lowering brow and flaming cheek construing the most innocent observations into personal reflections on himself. Not a gentleman! For an instant he winced under the phrase, and then with his blood boiling he determined to be revenged.
He had his voice perfectly under his command as he leant lazily back in his chair and looked up at her.
'Your husband's death!' he echoed. 'Don't you think, Mrs.--Mrs. Claxton, you had better drop all that nonsense with me?'
Alice scarcely understood his words, but there was no mistaking the marked insolence of his tone. 'I--I don't understand you,' she said, in amazement.