She told him as well as she could.
"Where have they gone to?"
"I have not the least idea. Bella gave no hint of this. Would you like to see her note?" and she held it out to him.
The name appeared to sting him like the cut of a whip, for he started convulsively as he took the scrap of paper. He read it through more than once, as if unable to comprehend it; the power of discrimination seemed blasted in his dry, red eyeballs; they could only glare.
He made it out at last, and crumpled it up in his hand, clenching it till the knuckles became dead-white under the strain.
"We were to have been married this day month," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper; then raising his voice, "You can guess, at least, which route they have taken?"
"Indeed I can not," she answered; "I would have done any thing to prevent this; but you must see that pursuit now would be worse than useless; it could only lead to fresh evils."
Then the smouldering passion burst into a flame.
"It is false," he cried out; "you would have done nothing. It is a plot. You are all in it; you, your son, and more that I will know soon. I saw it from the first moment I set foot in this cursed house. And you think I will not be revenged? Wait—wait and see!" He spoke rapidly, but it seemed as if the words could hardly force their way through his gnashing teeth.
Good and kind-hearted as she was, there breathed no prouder woman than Lady Catharine Livingstone. Before he had ended her hand was on the bell.