Again an icy chill ran through me; but I hated this man so intensely, that not even terror could subdue me: and when Sir Edmund asked me if I had courage to kill an insect, I answered—"There are insects so loathsome and contemptible, that to crush them is a pleasure."
I felt that I was making an odious speech; I saw in Edward's face an expression almost of disgust. I felt that I was sinking every moment in his opinion; perhaps, losing ground in his affections. I felt that this was the work of those men who, one under the cover of a devoted attachment, the other of playful gallantry, were ruining and exposing me.
A spirit of reckless defiance took possession of me, and I completely lost my head. A torrent of words burst from my lips, of which I hardly knew the meaning, as I uttered them. I said there were crimes worse than murder. I said that to torture was worse than to kill: to make life a curse worse than to take it away. I pointed to the insect that was crawling on the table, and asked if it would not be mercy to kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in their tongues, whose language is refined, and whose thoughts are devilish.
Strange and terrible words they were which I spoke in that hour; there was eloquence and power in them, for what is so eloquent as the pent-up agony of years, when at last it finds a vent? What is so powerful as the outpouring of the soul, when it breaks down the barriers it has long respected?
They quailed before my glance, those two men whose victim I was. Mr. Escourt's pale cheek was flushed, and Henry's grew pale. He trembled for himself and for me. The fabric which he had raised by his cunning, and maintained by his arts, was tottering to its base. Like to Samson in the temple of the Philistines, strength had returned to me in the hour of abasement; and I was dragging down upon him, and upon myself, the ruin which had so long hung over my head.
"I would advise you to choose another theme for the display of your eloquence, than the apology of murder."
A convulsive shudder seized me as Edward addressed to me these terrible words. If he had charged me with the guilt of murder, I could not have trembled more violently.
"You are ill, Mrs. Middleton; I am sure you are ill!" exclaimed Sir Edmund, springing forward to support me.
I felt myself falling, and stretched out my hand to take hold of Edward's; when I grasped it, it was as cold as ice. He led me out of the room; and when he had placed me on the sofa in my dressing-room, he rang the bell. As soon as my maid came in, he left me without a look or a word.
I did not attempt to recall him; I was stunned and exhausted. I felt an inexpressible longing to forget the anguish I was enduring; and, while my maid was for a moment out of the room, I hastily took a large dose of laudanum, which first stupified, and then sent me to sleep.