“As I expected, you have no idea—you have no plans—you have nowhere to go; and yet in a fit of mad folly you would fly from here, the only place where you could take refuge; and why?”
“Because I have found that the man I believed in was not worthy of that trust.”
“No; because in a maddening moment, when my love for you had broken bounds, I spoke out, prematurely perhaps, but I obeyed the dictates of my breast. But there, I am not going to deliver speeches; I only wish to make you understand fully what is your position and mine. I said a great deal last night, enough to have taught you much; above all, that our marriage is a necessity, for your sake as much as mine. No, no; sit still and be calm. We must both be so, and you must talk reasonably. Now, my dear, take off that bonnet and mantle.”
She made no reply.
“Well, I will not trouble about that now. You will see the necessity after a few minutes. First of all, let me impress upon you the simple facts of your position here. In the first place, you are kept here by the way in which you have compromised yourself. Yes, you have; and if you drove me to it I should openly proclaim that you have been my mistress, and were striving to break our ties in consequence of a quarrel.”
She made no reply, but her eyes seemed to blaze.
“Yes,” he said, with a smile; “I understand your looks. I am a traitor, and a coward, and a villain; that is, I suppose, the interpretation from your point of view; but let me tell you there are thousands of men who would be ten times the traitor, coward and villain that you mentally call me, to win you and your smiles, as I shall.”
He stood looking down at her with a proud look of power, and she involuntarily shrank back in her seat and trembled.
“In the second place,” he continued, “I take it from your manner that you mean for a few days to be defiant, and that you will try to escape. Well, try if you like, and find how vain it is. I have you here, and in spite of everything I shall keep you safely. I will be plain and frank. For your fortune and for yourself I love you with a middle-aged man’s strong love for a beautiful girl who has awakened in him passions that he thought were dead. You will try and escape? No, you will not; for now, for the first time, I shall really cage the lovely little bird I have entrapped. You will keep to your room, a prisoner, till you place your hands in mine, and tell me that you are mine whenever I wish. You will appeal to my servants? Well, appeal to them. You will try and escape by your window? Well, try. You must know by now that it opens over a narrow yard, and an attempt to descend from that means death; but there are ways of fastening such a window as that, and this will be done, for I want to live and love, and your death would mean mine.”
He paused and looked down at her in calm triumph, but her firm gaze never left his, and her lips were tightly drawn together.