“Yes; I remember.” Sharply. “You asked where we were driving? Across the country. What is the meaning of this––outrage, I believe you called it? All actions spring from two sources––Cupid and cupidity. The rest of the riddle you’ll have to guess.” Gazing insolently into her face, with his hands on his knees.
“But you have told me nothing,” she replied, striving to remain mistress of herself and to hide her apprehension.
“Do you call that nothing? You have the approximate cause––causa causans. Was it Cupid? No, for like Bacon, your sex’s ‘fantastical’ charms move me not.”
This sally put him in better temper with himself. She was helpless, and he experienced a churlish satisfaction in her condition.
“What was it, then? Cupidity. Do you know what poverty is like in this barren region?” he cried harshly. 148 “The weapons of education only unfit you for the plow. You stint, pinch, live on nothing!” He rubbed his dry hands together. “It was crumbs and scraps under the parsimonious régime; but now the prodigal has come into his own and believes in honest wages and a merry life.”
Wonderingly she listened, the scene like a grotesque dream, with the ever-moving coach, the lonely road, the dark woods, and––so near, she could almost place her hand upon him––this man, muttering and mumbling. He had offered her the key of the mystery, but she had failed to use it. His ambiguous, loose talk, only perplexed and alarmed her; the explanation was none at all.
As he watched her out of the corner of his eye, weighing doubt and uncertainty, new ideas assailed him. After all she had spirit, courage! Moreover, she was an actress, and the patroon was madly in love with her.
“If we were only leagued together, how we could strip him!” he thought.
His head dropped contemplatively to his breast, and for a long interval he remained silent, abstracted, while the old springless coach, with many a jolt and jar, covered mile after mile; up the hills, crowned with bush and timber; across the table land; over the plank bridges spanning the brooks and rivulets. More reconciled to his part and her presence, his lips once or twice parted as if he were about to speak, but closed again. He even smiled, showing his amber-hued 149 teeth, nodding his head in a friendly fashion, as to say: “It’ll come out all right, Madam; all right for both of us!” Which, indeed, was his thought. She believed him unsettled, bereft of reason, and, although, he was manifestly growing less hostile, his surveillance became almost unbearable. At every moment she felt him regarding her like a lynx, and endeavored therefore to keep perfectly still. What would her strange warder do next? It was not an alarming act, however. He consulted a massive watch, remarking:
“It’s lunch time and over! With your permission, I’ll take a bite and a drop. Will you join me?”