“But if I were to remove that objection, could you not like me?”
“Impossible!”
“Have I ever done anything to prevent it?”
“Yes, much.”
“Surely not toward you; and if not toward you, toward whom?”
“Toward Estelle!” said Clara, roused to an intrepid scorn, which carried her beyond the bounds at once of prudence and of fear.
Had Ratcliff seen Estelle rise bodily before him, he could not have been struck more to the heart with an emotion partaking at once of awe and of rage. The habitually florid hue of his cheeks faded to a pale purple. He swung his arms awkwardly, as if at a loss what to do with them. He paced the floor wildly, and finally gasping forth, “Young woman, you shall—you shall repent this,” left the room.
He did not make his appearance in Clara’s parlor again that day. It was already late in the afternoon. Dinner was nearly ready. The consideration that such serious excitement would be bad for his appetite gradually calmed him down; and by the time he was called to the table he had thrown off the effects of the shock which a single word had given him. The dinner was a repetition of that of the day before, varied by the production of new dishes and wines. Sam was evidently doing his best as a caterer. Again Ratcliff sat late, and again Sam saw him safe up-stairs and helped him to undress. And again the slave-lord slept late into the hours of the forenoon.
After breakfast on the third day of his return he paced the back piazza for some two hours, smoking cigars. He had no thought but for the one scheme before him. To be baffled in that was to lose all. Public affairs sank into insignificance. Sam handed him a newspaper, but without glancing at it he threw it over the balustrade into the area. “She’s but a wayward girl, after all! I must be patient with her,” thought he, one moment. And the next his mood varied, and he muttered to himself: “A slave! Damnation! To be treated so by a slave,—one I could force to drudge instead of letting her play the lady!”
Suddenly he went up-stairs and paid her a third visit. His manner and speech were abrupt.