And she advanced towards the door, her bosom heaving with convulsions almost to bursting from its confinement.
“No—no—you shall not leave me yet, nor thus!” cried the Italian, darting after and catching her violently by the arm. “You shall have the opportunity of explanation which you desire; and God help you in the task!”
Thus speaking he forced her back to the sofa; and then locked the door of the apartment, putting the key in his pocket.
“This behaviour on your part, signor,” said Perdita, assuming a composure which she did not—could not feel, “is alike mean and cowardly. You seek to intimidate me—and that is mean: you use violence towards me—and that is cowardly. What have you heard against me? Name the calumniator, and recite the calumnies. But if the accusation resolve itself into this,—that I was frail—weak—unchaste before I became your wife, remember that I never deceived you on that subject! You yourself were my paramour before you were my husband; and when you offered me your hand, I reminded you that it was no virgin-bride whom you would receive to the bridal-bed. Ere now you called me Perdita—and I admit that such is my Christian name. But am I responsible for the circumstances which induced my mother to bestow it upon me? You are doubtless aware, from the same source whence you have gleaned evil tidings concerning me, that I was born in Newgate, and that my maternal parent gave me that odious name in a moment of contrition. Well—is this my fault? Be just, Lorenzo—I do not ask you to be generous;—but again I say, be just!”
“I have listened to you with attention, Perdita—and I am bound to declare that you seek to veil a hideous depravity beneath the most specious sophistry,” said Barthelma, speaking in a slow, measured tone, but with a concentrated fury in his soul. “I do not reproach you for your mother’s crimes—I commiserate you on that score. But I feel indignant—oh! bitterly, bitterly indignant at all the treachery—the perfidy you have practised towards me! I knew that you were unchaste, as you yourself express it—but I believed that it was mere frailty on your part, and not inveterate profligacy? Oh! Perdita, how dared you bring to the marriage-bed of an honourable man a body polluted with all the vice and iniquity of a penal colony, and which had been for years common as that of the vilest prostitute? I gave you a noble name—circumstances have robbed it of its aristocratic lustre—but it is still honourable;—and now how is it menaced? You have lavished your favours upon hundreds—you have led a life of such frightful wantonness, young in years as you are, that your soul has grown old in iniquity! Oh! I know it all—I know everything, Perdita: all the intricacies of your character are revealed to me—I have read the mysteries of its darkest depths—and my eyes are at length opened to the astounding folly that I perpetrated in linking my fate with such as you!”
“Then let us separate at once,” exclaimed Perdita, her cheeks flushing with indignation. “Wherefore prolong this interview? Our quarrel has gone too far and become too serious ever to admit of pardon or oblivion.”
“It is not I who will seek such reconciliation,” returned Barthelma, with terrible malignity in his tone and manner. “I loved you, Perdita—God only knows how tenderly, how sincerely, how devotedly I loved you! I would have died for you,—aye, and should have rejoiced to surrender up my life, could such a sacrifice have benefitted you! Confident, frank, and full of generous candour, I gave you the love of an honourable man;—and you deceived me! Oh! I am now no stranger to all your syren wiles—your Circean witcheries: I recognise all that artifice and all that duplicity in many of the circumstances which marked our first meetings, and which rivetted the chains that you threw around me. What! do you suppose that I can consent to live and become the scorn, the laughing-stock, and the scandal of all who know me?—and think you that I will permit you to go forth into the world and point me out with taunting finger to the first idiot whom you may win as your paramour? My God! the thought is maddening—it sears my very brain!”
And so terrible became the young Italian’s aspect,—with his flashing eyes, convulsing countenance, and quivering lips,—that Perdita, now seriously alarmed, rushed to the door, forgetting that it was locked.
But it opened not to her touch, and, with a cry of terror, she turned towards her husband, who was evidently exercising superhuman efforts to restrain the fury that boiled in his breast and darted in lightning-shafts from his wild eyes.
“O Lorenzo—Lorenzo!” she exclaimed, joining her hands together; “what do you mean to do?—what is it that you require of me? My God! I know that I have been wicked—vile—profligate: but I have been faithful to you—I have never ceased to love you from the first moment we met! That day in the Champs Elysées has ever been a bright one—aye, the brightest on which my retrospective looks could dwell—”