Lord Dunstable cast one glance up to that countenance which looked malignantly on him.
"Lydia!" he said: "is that you? or is my imagination playing me false?"
"It is Lydia Hutchinson, whom you betrayed—whose brother fell by your hand—and who is now here to taunt you with all the infamy of your conduct towards her," was the calm and measured reply.
"Am alone with you?—is there none else present?" asked Dunstable, in a tone of alarm.
Lydia drew the curtains completely aside; and the nobleman cast a hasty look round the room.
"You see that we are alone together," she said; "and you are in my power!"
"What would you do to me, Lydia?" he exclaimed: "you cannot be so wicked as to contemplate——"
"I am wicked enough to contemplate any thing horrible in respect to you!" interrupted the avenging woman. "But fear not for your life. No:—although your hands be imbrued with the blood of my brother, I would not become a murderess because you are a murderer."
"Did a man apply that name to me," said Dunstable, darting a savage glance towards Lydia's countenance, "he should repent his insolence sooner or later."
"And are you not a murderer as well as a ravisher?" cried Lydia, in a taunting tone. "By means the most vile—the most cowardly—the most detestable—the most degrading to a man, you possessed yourself of my virtue. Afterwards, when my brother stood forth as the avenger of his sister's lost honour, you dared to point the murderous weapon at him whom you had already so grossly wronged in wronging me. Ravisher, you are a cowardly villain!—duellist, you are a cold-blooded murderer!"