“You cannot make him answer them,” said Elinor, proudly, “whatever you may affirm!”
“Not on paper perhaps, but by word of mouth! I will take them back to him at Aldershot, and see whether he can deny what I have told when he is face to face with me!”
“Surely!—surely!—you would never proceed to so unmaidenly an extremity,” exclaimed Elinor, losing sight for a moment of her indignation in her horror at the idea. “You must not think of such a thing! You would create a scandal in the Camp! You would be despised for it ever after!”
“I can take care of myself!” replied Harriet, boldly, “you need not fear for me! And if even you do get your own way about this matter, you will have the satisfaction all your married life of knowing that your husband was a coward and a traitor to you, even during your engagement, and that you will never be able to trust him further than you can see him, to the end! If you can care for such a husband, take him, for I’m sure I wouldn’t. But he shall answer to me for all that!”
“Oh! Miss Brandt, let me go, pray let me go!” said Elinor in a tone of such unmistakeable pain, that the other involuntarily drew back, and let her push her way past her to the door.
As Miss Leyton disappeared, Harriet Brandt commenced to pace up and down the length of the drawing-room. It was not the swaying walk of disappointment and despair; it was determined and masterful, born of anger and a longing for revenge. All the Creole in her, came to the surface—like her cruel mother, she would have given over Ralph Pullen to the vivisecting laboratory, if she could. Her dark eyes rolled in her passion; her slight hands were clenched upon each other; and her crimson lips quivered with the inability to express all she felt. Bobby, glancing in upon her from the French windows which opened on the garden, crept to her side and tried to capture her clenched hands, and to keep her restless body still. But she threw him off, almost brutally. At that moment she was brutal.
“Leave me alone,” she exclaimed impatiently, “don’t touch me! Go away!”
“O! Hally,” the boy replied, sympathetically, “what is the matter? Has anyone offended you? Let me know! Let me try to comfort you! Or tell me what I shall do to help you.”
“Do!” cried the girl, contemptuously, “what could you do?—a baby tied to your mother’s apron-string! Leave me to myself, I say! I don’t want you, or anyone! I want to be alone! Boys are of no use! It requires a man to revenge a woman’s wrong!”
The lad, after one long look of bitter disappointment, walked quietly away from the spot, and hid his grief in some sequestered part of the garden. Hally despised him—she, who had kissed him and let him lay his head upon her shoulder and tell her all his little troubles—said he was of no use, when she stood in need of help and comfort! When, if she only knew it, he was ready to stand up in her defence against twenty men, if need be, and felt strong enough to defeat them all! But she had called him a baby, tied to his mother’s apron-strings. The iron entered into his very soul.