“Recline, Marguerite; repose yourself while we converse,” he said, for deeply displeased as he was, it moved his heart to see her sitting there so white and gaunt.
She took him at his word and sank down with her elbow on the piled-up cushions, and her fingers run up through her lustrous tresses supporting her head, and repeated.
“Question me, Philip, it is your right!”
“I must go far back. The scene of this evening has awakened other recollections, not important by themselves, but foreboding, threatening, in connection with what has occurred to-night. I allude in the first place to those yearly migrations of yours that so puzzled your friends; will you now explain them to me?”
“Philip, ask to take the living, beating heart from my bosom and you shall do it—but I cannot give you the explanation you desire,” she answered, in a mournful tone.
“You cannot!” he repeated, growing white and speaking through his closed teeth.
“I cannot, alas! Philip, it concerns another.”
“Another! Man or woman?”
“Neith—oh, Heaven, Philip, I cannot tell you!”
“Very well,” he said, but there was that in his tone and manner that made his simple exclamation more alarming than the bitterest reproaches and threats could have been.