“I cannot help whether it is cruel or not,” he said, growing white with anger at her opposition, “and you are forcing me to speak before this boy.”
“I leave that to your common-sense, John,” she said calmly, and with no little dignity in her manner. “I don’t know that I wish to hide anything from Antony Grace. He knows of our engagement.”
“Are you mad, Miriam?” he cried, unable to contain himself, and indirectly venting his spleen upon me. “You pick up a poor boy out of the gutter, and you take him and make him your bosom friend and confidant.”
Miss Carr caught my hand in hers, as I started, stung to the quick and mortified by his words.
“Shame, John Lister!” she said, with a look that should have brought him to his senses. “Shame! How can you speak like that in Antony Grace’s presence, and to me?”
“Because you make me desperate,” he cried angrily. “I can bear it no longer. I will not be trifled with. For months now you have treated me as a child. Once more, will you send away this boy, or come with me into another room?”
“Mr Lister,” she said, rising, “you are angry and excited. You are saying words now which you will afterwards grieve over, as much as I snail regret to have heard them spoken.”
“I can’t help that,” he exclaimed. “Day after day I have come to you, begging you to listen to me, but I have always been put off, until now I have grown desperate.”
“Desperate?” she said wonderingly.
“Yes, desperate. I do not wish to speak before this boy, but you force me to it.”