Chapter Seventeen.
“You Insult Me!”
And now Nurse Elisia sat in Ralph Elthorne’s chamber, her face buried in her hands, the memories of her past life rushing back and a sense of misery and despair increasing, so that she felt that the time had come when she must rise and flee from a place which had suddenly become insupportable to her.
Then a change came over her. There was a feeling of passionate resentment, and a desire to do battle against the one who had wrecked her life.
“Shall I stand by and see another’s life destroyed as mine has been?”
But her own misery and despair drove these thoughts away, and her spirit was sinking lower and lower as the complications of her position seemed to increase.
“I cannot stay here,” she said to herself. “It is impossible. I have no part or parcel with these people. I have done my duty, and I must go.”
Suddenly she started as if she had been stung, for her hand had been taken, and Neil Elthorne was bending over her.