“I thought, sir, that our last interview, of only this morning, had finally settled all between us? Upon that occasion I told you some harsh truths—and with some violence, which I regret; feeling sorry that the honest verdict of my head and heart should not have been delivered with more temperance.”
“And which you shall more deeply regret before we part, scornful girl.”
Her eyes blazed wide and full, like sudden meteors, and then fell into darkness, as she replied, with constrained calmness:
“I pray you, sir, do not provoke me. I am subject to anger, as other people are to ague and fever.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Is that meant for an appeal or for a threat? If for an appeal, I am not subject to magnanimity, as other people are to insanity!—if for a threat, how ridiculous! Be angry—furious—violent! What can you do now? Why, thou foolish girl, thou art completely in my power.”
“In your power! Not so, insolent creature, ‘whom it were base flattery to call a man’; there are no circumstances whatever that could put me in your power.”
“Why, you absurd woman! look around you. Deep and silent night hangs over the world. You stand alone with me upon a barren, uninhabited, sea-girt isle. How far off do you suppose the nearest human being is from us? How loud a shriek from this lone spot could raise the distant sleepers of the mainland from their beds?”
Garnet raised her proud head to give some indignant answer, but meeting the gaze of her companion, the burning, scathing anger of her reply froze in horror ere it passed her lips—for never did night lower over a countenance darker, more dreadful with demoniacal malignity of purpose. Garnet turned her eyes from the baleful glare of Hardcastle to throw them over the lone and desert isle on which they stood, and for the first time a sense of the appalling danger of her situation swam in upon her brain, and for a moment nearly overwhelmed her. His countenance lighted up with a fiendish triumph. He continued:
“Yes, Miss Seabright. Yes, Garnet. You have read my look and purpose aright. This night must you and I come to a reckoning. This hour, haughty girl, shall your pride be humbled. To-day you rejected my hand with scorn. To-morrow shall you sue for it as for life. Ha! already my triumph begins. You grow pale, lady.”
“No!—pale? If my cheek did so belie my soul as to grow pale before a wretch like you, by my soul, I would paint it black for the rest of my life, and sell myself to base servitude as being too low for any other sphere. Oh, sir! the sudden revelation of your enormous wickedness shocked me for a single instant, as if I had unexpectedly been confronted with the foul fiend—that was all! And now I tell you that even on this lone sea isle I do not feel myself to be in your power. I am not the least afraid of you! Afraid of you? I am afraid of nothing. I do not know the word. I never did know it; and it is not likely that you can teach it to me.”