“Do you think that I should go through this scene by way of a joke? I never was so much in earnest in my life before. I am in love with her, I tell you, as much in love as though I had known her for years. What happened to you with reference to me has happened to me with reference to her, or something very like it, and marry her I must and will.”
Lady Bellamy, as she heard these words, rose from her chair and flung herself on the ground before him, clasping his knees with her hands.
“Oh, George, George!” she cried, in a broken voice, “have some little pity; do not force me to do this unnatural thing. Is your heart a stone, or are you altogether a devil, that by such cruel threats you can drive me into becoming the instrument of my own shame? I know what I am, none better: but for whose sake did I become so? Surely, George, I have some claim on your compassion, if I have none on your love. Think again, George; and, if you will not give her up, choose some other means to compass this poor girl’s ruin.”
“Get up, Anne, and don’t talk sentimental rubbish. Not but what,” he added, with a sneer, “it is rather amusing to hear you pitying your successful rival.”
She sprang to her feet, all the softness and entreaty gone from her face, which was instead now spread with her darkest and most vindictive look.
“I pity her!” she said. “I hate her. Look you, if I have to do this, my only consolation will be in knowing that what I do will drag my successor down below my own level. I suffer; she shall suffer more; I know you a fiend, she shall find a whole hell with you; she is purer and better than I have ever been; soon you shall make her worse than I have dreamt of being. Her purity shall be dishonoured, her love betrayed, her life reduced to such chaos that she shall cease to believe even in her God, and in return for these things I will give her—you. Your new plaything shall pass through my mill, George Caresfoot, before ever she comes to yours; and on her I will repay with interest all that I have suffered at your hands;” and, exhausted with the fierceness of her own invective and the violence of conflicting passions, she sank back into her chair.
“Bravo, Anne! quite in your old style. I daresay that the young lady will require a little moulding, and she could not be in better hands; but mind, no tricks—I am not going to be cheated out of my bride.”
“You need not fear, George; I shall not murder her. I do not believe in violence; it is the last resort of fools. If I did, you would not be alive now.”
George laughed a little uneasily.
“Well, we are good friends again, so there is no need to talk of such things,” he said. “The campaign will not be by any means an easy one— there are many obstacles in the way, and I don’t think that my intended has taken a particular fancy to me. You will have to work for your letters, Anne; but first of all take a day or two to think it over, and make a plan of the campaign. And now good-by; I have got a bad headache, and am going to lie down.”