Marcia’s head was up grandly now and her voice had come back. She looked the man in the eye until he quailed, but still he sought to hold his power over her.
“You poor child!” and his voice was gentleness and forbearance itself. “I do not wonder in your first horror and surprise that you feel as you do. I anticipated this. Sit down and calm yourself and let me tell you more about it. I can prove everything that I have said. I have letters here——” and he swept his hand toward a pile of letters lying on the table; Miranda in the closet marked well the position of those letters. “All that I have said is only too true, I am sorry to say, and you must listen to me——”
Marcia interrupted him, her eyes blazing, her face excited: “Mr. Temple, I shall not listen to another word you say. You are a wicked man and I was wrong to come here at all. You deceived me or I should not have come. I must go home at once.” With that she started toward the door.
Harry Temple flung aside the shawl that covered his sometime sprained ankle and arose quickly, placing himself before her, forgetful of his invalid rôle:
“Not so fast, my pretty lady,” he said, grasping her wrists fiercely in both his hands. “You need not think to escape so easily. You shall not leave this room except in my company. Do you not know that you are in my power? You have spent nearly an hour alone in my bedchamber, and what will your precious husband have to do with you after this is known?”
CHAPTER XXIV
Miranda’s time had come. She had seen it coming and was prepared.
With a movement like a flash she pushed open the closet door, seized the pot of ink from the table, and before the two excited occupants of the room had time to even hear her or realize that she was near, she hurled the ink pot full into the insolent face of Harry Temple. The inkstand itself was a light affair of horn and inflicted only a slight wound, but the ink came into his eyes in a deluge blinding him completely, as Miranda had meant it should do. She had seen no other weapon of defense at hand.