Lady Bellamy glanced up from under her heavy-lidded eyes; a thought had evidently struck her, but she did not express it.
“Then I am to tell your cousin George that you will have absolutely nothing to do with him?”
“Yes, and beg him to cease persecuting me; it is quite useless; if there were no Arthur and no other man in the world, I would not marry him. I detest him—I cannot tell you how I detest him.”
“It is amusing to hear you talk so, and to think that you will certainly be Mrs. George Caresfoot within nine months.”
“Never,” answered Angela, passionately stamping her foot upon the floor. “What makes you say such horrible things?”
“I reflect,” answered Lady Bellamy, with an ominous smile, “that George Caresfoot has made up his mind to marry you, and that I have made up mine to help him to do so, and that your will, strong as it certainly is, is, as compared with our united wills, what a straw is to a gale. The straw cannot travel against the wind, it must go with it, and you must marry George Caresfoot. You will as certainly come to the altar-rails with him as you will to your death-bed. It is written in your face. Good-bye.”
For the first time Angela’s courage really gave way as she heard these dreadful words. She remembered how she herself had called Lady Bellamy an embodiment of the “Spirit of Power,” and now she felt that the comparison was just. The woman was power incarnate, and her words, which from anybody else she would have laughed at, sent a cold chill through her.
“She is a fine creature both in mind and body,” reflected Lady Bellamy, as she stepped into her carriage. “Really, though I try to hate her, I can find it in my heart to be sorry for her. Indeed, I am not sure that I do not like her; certainly I respect her. But she has come in my path and must be crushed—my own safety demands it. At least, she is worth crushing, and the game is fair, for perhaps she will crush me. I should not be surprised; there is a judgment in those grey eyes of hers—Qui vivra verra. Home, William.”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Angela’s appeal for protection set Philip thinking.