They started as at an apparition.
Fearful indeed was the aspect of the little fury, as with bloodshot eyes, quivering lips, and spasm-contracted face, she trembled before them. All that was diabolical in her nature seemed roused, and looking from her eyes: passion made her hideous.
"Your little history is incomplete," she said in a hissing tone; her voice lowered by the intensity of her feeling; "there is a chapter to be added, which you will allow me to add. Miss Vyner is so excellent a listener that she will not refuse to hear it."
Violet looked haughtily down upon her, and said,—
"I desire to hear no more."
"But you must hear this; it concerns you. You cannot be indifferent to anything which relates to your honourable lover; you cannot be unwilling to know that he who offers you his hand is vain fool enough to be the dupe of any woman, as he has been mine. He has told you, and how prettily he told it! what pathos! what romance! he told you how I played with him. That is true. He was such a vain silly creature that no one could resist the temptation. Not only did I make a fool of him as a girl. I have done so as a married woman. I persuaded him that even respect for my husband, respect for the world could not withstand the all-conquering beauty of his lumpish person, and he believed it! believed that his face was a charm no woman could resist. This besotted vanity brought him to my feet; yes, even at the time you were sighing for him, he was at my feet, ardent, submissive, a plaything for my caprice!"
She saw Violet writhing, and her savage heart exulted in the pain she was inflicting; she saw Marmaduke's calm contempt, and her exasperation deepened at the unavailingness of her sarcasms to wound him.
Turning from her, as from one unworthy of notice, he said to Violet,—
"I repeat, my fate is in your hands. I love you, love you as I never loved before—with my whole soul: love you with deep reverence for all that is so great and noble in you, and to that generous and exalted mind I leave my errors to be judged."
The sarcasm implied in this avowal almost maddened Mrs. Vyner.