"My voice is not adapted to cooing and flattering, as his is!" he retorted, with sudden savagery. "It has had no practice in such arts."
"It is odd," Clare said, affecting not to notice his growing anger, "that we did not see you when we visited your uncle's house last Wednesday afternoon!"
"Oh, I am kept in the background!" he returned, with a short laugh. "I am not pretty or nice-mannered enough to be shown to visitors; and they have never thought of a cage for me, with 'Keep away—he bites!' as a warning inscription. My cousin is the show animal, with nice, tea-drinking, tennis-playing manners. My roughness frightens people. Why, I have already frightened your friend here, as you see."
Clare glanced at Laline. The latter was sitting with her eyes fixed, in fascinated dislike, upon the third occupant of the room. Perhaps she hardly realised how clearly her features expressed the disgust with which he inspired her. But Wallace saw it and winced under it. No woman in his sober moments had contemplated him like that yet, and he felt he hated both her and himself for that look.
"I ought to have introduced you!" cried Clare. "How stupid of me! Lina, this is our Mr. Armstrong's cousin, and he thinks he frightened you. Isn't that absurd?"
"Very. I am not at all afraid of Mr. Armstrong."
"By——But you shall be!" was the thought that sprang into life in Wallace's mind as he noted the quiet scorn of her tones. He turned to look at her as she sat by the fire in her soft white draperies, with slender hands clasped loosely round her knee, one foot on a stool before her, and her head a little thrown back. She looked very beautiful at that moment and her beauty struck into his heart like a dull pain. There was something proud and aloof in her appearance of icy purity and reserve; and when he contrasted her present haughtiness of bearing with the passionate demonstrativeness with which she had, as she thought, flung herself into the arms of his cousin a few moments before, a bitter anger was stirred within him.
Why should she lavish caresses upon Lorin and treat him—Wallace—like a dog?
He would make her pay for it, for certain, and he was not a man to register a vow of vengeance against any one and fail to make it good.
He could not guess that Laline's appearance of scornful quiet was to a great extent the result of the tumult of emotions which agitated her. A fierce despair held possession of her heart. She seemed to see, lying in ruins about her feet, the beautiful castle in the air that love had built; and the dirge of a love that must die was ringing in her ears as an accompaniment to every word he uttered. This extreme tension of feeling kept her rigid as a statue, outwardly cold, but with heart and brain on fire. Her every nerve was in quivering rebellion against Fate, which had linked her to this man she hated, while with all her soul she longed to be the wife of another. And so she sat, within a few feet of her husband, preternaturally pale and still, her heart throbbing with a woman's passionate love and as passionate grief under her white conventual gown; and Wallace looked and hated her for her scornful pride, and hated his cousin for having won her love, and told himself that he would punish the pair of them if the chance should come in his way.