“What do I know?” said she, sharply.
He left a pause before he said, without change of manner, “That I was thinking of marrying. You saw Miss Harleth?”
“She told you that?”
The pale cheeks looked even paler, perhaps from the fierce brightness in the eyes above them.
“No. Lush told me,” was the slow answer. It was as if the thumb-screw and the iron boot were being placed by creeping hands within sight of the expectant victim.
“Good God! say at once that you are going to marry her,” she burst out, passionately, her knees shaking and her hands tightly clasped.
“Of course, this kind of thing must happen some time or other, Lydia,” said he; really, now the thumb-screw was on, not wishing to make the pain worse.
“You didn’t always see the necessity.”
“Perhaps not. I see it now.”
In those few undertoned words of Grandcourt’s she felt as absolute a resistance as if her thin fingers had been pushing at a fast shut iron door. She knew her helplessness, and shrank from testing it by any appeal—shrank from crying in a dead ear and clinging to dead knees, only to see the immovable face and feel the rigid limbs. She did not weep nor speak; she was too hard pressed by the sudden certainty which had as much of chill sickness in it as of thought and emotion. The defeated clutch of struggling hope gave her in these first moments a horrible sensation. At last she rose, with a spasmodic effort, and, unconscious of every thing but her wretchedness, pressed her forehead against the hard, cold glass of the window. The children, playing on the gravel, took this as a sign that she wanted them, and, running forward, stood in front of her with their sweet faces upturned expectantly. This roused her: she shook her head at them, waved them off, and overcome with this painful exertion, sank back in the nearest chair.