“When a man discovers that he has taken a reptile to his bosom,” said Charles, the words hissing through his almost set teeth, “he flings it away from him. He ought to crush it beneath his heel!”
The last sentence was added after a moment’s pause, and ere Perdita, who was astounded at the tone, and manner, and words of her husband, had regained the power of utterance so as to enable her lips to shape a comment or a reply.
“Is it to me that this insulting allusion applies?” she demanded at length—her countenance becoming ashy pale, and her lips quivering with the rage which she still sought to subdue.
“It is to you that I addressed myself,” exclaimed Charles, now turning round and confronting the woman whom he had lately loved with such madness, and whom he now loathed with such savage aversion. “Vile—polluted—wanton thing,” he cried, unabashed—undismayed by the lightning glances that flashed from her wildly dilating orbs: “the mask is torn from your face as the film from my eyes—and I am no longer your dupe, though, alas! I am perhaps still your victim! I know all—all—every thing,—the depravity of your past life—the hypocrisy of your present course:—all—all is now revealed to me. Your evil fame has followed you from beyond the seas;—it overtook you on the Marine Parade at Dover;—and it now attaches itself for ever to your steps, in the capital of France. Oh! my God—how cruelly, how miserably have I been deceived!”
And the young man darted a glance of savage hatred upon the woman who, pale and motionless as a marble statue, seemed petrified by the crushing truths that fell upon her ears.
Meantime Mr. Hatfield stood aloof, with folded arms—listening to the words that his son addressed to Perdita, and marking their effect.
“That you were born in Newgate—of a woman condemned to death for felony, and then reprieved,—this was no fault of yours,” continued Charles, in a slow and measured tone—for he sought as much as possible to prevent a violent outburst of the rage that boiled within him:—“that the mystic name of Perdita, or ‘The Lost One,’ should have proved prophetic of your after life, you also could not help;—and that, amongst the felonry of New South Wales, you should have become polluted—contaminated—and indeed lost, was perhaps a fate for which you are rather to be pitied than blamed. But here all sympathy ceases for you! Wherefore, on your arrival in England, did you seek me out to become your victim?—wherefore did your wretched mother dog my footsteps—accost me—ensnare me into a discourse to which she imparted a mysterious interest—and then lead me into your presence? Why did you open the battery of all your meretricious charms upon me?—why cast your spells around me—wean my affections from an estimable young lady who is white as snow compared with the blackness of your soul—and lead me on until the crowning act of ruin was accomplished yesterday in the Chapel of the British Embassy?”
“I have heard you with patience—and if you possess the generosity of a man and an Englishman, you will give me an equal share of your attention,” said Perdita, who, during her husband’s address, had recovered all her wonted presence of mind—though her heart was wounded in its very core. “It is true that I was born in Newgate—that I deceived you respecting the origin of my Christian name—and that I escaped not the contamination of a far-off clime into which my sad destinies threw me. But when my mother, for reasons which I think she made satisfactorily apparent to you, sought an interview with you,—and when that circumstance introduced us to each other, did you not proffer me your friendship of your own accord?—did you not next assure me that this sentiment had changed to the feeling of love?—did you not implore me, almost on your knees, to become your wife at the altar—I, who in the first instance had proposed and agreed to become your mistress only? And then you dare to speak of our marriage as the crowning act of you ruin,—that marriage on which you yourself so imploringly—so earnestly—so solemnly insisted?”
“Oh! yes—because I deemed you pure and virtuous!” exclaimed Charles, almost gnashing his teeth as the words of Perdita reminded him of all the arts which she had practised to ensnare him—all the sophistry she had used to make herself appear in his eyes every thing that she was not.
“Was it to be supposed,” she asked, impatiently and haughtily,—that shameless Perdita—“was it to be supposed that I would reveal to you the incidents of my past life? And yet, even if I had, I do firmly and sincerely believe that you would still have made me your wife!”