“Well, what have you to say?” she cried. “Do you want to preach to me, to ask me to repent and sorrow with you? For what? Is it a crime to love?”
“Leo, my child!”
“Leo, my child!” she cried scornfully, as she repeated his words. “I tell you I am a child no longer, and that I will think and act for myself. Fool, idiot that I have been!” she cried, as her passion grew more wild and her voice rose. “I have submitted to you both till it has become unbearable. From this day, if I stay here, I will be my own mistress, and suffer your dictation no more. Teach and torture Mary into her grave, if you like, but I will be free.”
“Say nothing, Hartley,” said Mary softly. “She will repent all this, dear, when she is calm. Leo, stay with me. Hartley, dear, pray say no more; she is not mistress of herself, and to-morrow, perhaps to-day, this painful scene will be forgiven and forgotten by us all.”
“Forgiven? No. Forgotten? Never,” cried Leo; “and I tell you both that if I am driven from the home that I should have shared, and my future becomes to me a curse, it is your work.”
She had lashed herself into a pitch of unreasoning fury, and invective was flowing fast from her lips, when, in the midst of one of her most furious bursts, and just as Salis was being driven to despair, there was a sharp tap at the door, and before it could be answered, another, and Dally came into the room.
“Is Miss Leo ill, sir?” she cried. “I heard her sobbing in my room. Can I do anything? Shall I light a fire?”
It was Dally’s idea of being of some help, that of lighting a fire.
“No, no. Go away,” cried Salis passionately; but he said no more, for Leo had crossed quickly to the little servant maid, and clung to her.
“Go with me to my room, Dally,” she said in a sharp, strained voice; “and let them follow me if they dare.”