“Well, on the whole, you may have reason to do so. Come, Edith, no secrets between old friends. Why do you wear that ring upon your finger? It was on Ullershaw’s this morning.”
She reflected a moment, then with characteristic courage came to the conclusion that she might as well get it over at once. The same instinct that had prompted her to become engaged to Rupert within half an hour of having made up her mind to the deed, made her determine to take the opportunity to break once and for all with her evil genius, Dick.
“Oh,” she answered calmly, “didn’t I tell you? I meant to in the hall. Why, for the usual reason that one wears a ring upon that finger—because I am engaged to him.”
Dick went perfectly white, and his black eyes glowed in his head like half-extinguished fires.
“You false—”
She held up her hand, and he left the sentence unfinished.
“Don’t speak that which you might regret and I might remember, Dick; but since you force me to it, listen for a moment to me, and then let us say good-night, or good-bye, as you wish. I have been faithful to that old, silly promise, wrung from me as a girl. For you I have lost opportunity after opportunity, hoping that you would mend, imploring you to mend, and you, you know well how you have treated me, and what you are to-day, a discredited man, the toady of Lord Devene, living on his bounty because you are useful to him. Yet I clung to you who am a fool, and only this morning I made up my mind to reject Rupert also. Then you played that trick at the shooting; you pretended not to see that I was hurt, you pretended that you did not fire the shot, because you are mean and were afraid of Rupert. I tell you that as I sat upon the ground there and understood, in a flash I saw you as you are, and I had done with you. Compare yourself with him and you too will understand. And now, move away from that door and let me go.”
“I understand perfectly well that Rupert is the heir to a peerage and I am not,” he answered, who saw that, being defenceless, his only safety lay in attack. “You have sold yourself, Edith, sold yourself to a man you don’t care that for,” and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t take the trouble to lie to me, you know you don’t, and you know that I know it too. You have just made a fool of him to suit yourself, as you can with most men when you please, and though I don’t like the infernal, pious prig, I tell you I am sorry for him, poor beggar.”
“Have you done?” asked Edith calmly.
“No, not yet. You sneer at me and turn up your eyes—yes, you—because I am not a kind of saint fit to go in double harness with this Rupert, and because, not being the next heir to great rank and fortune, I haven’t been plastered over with decorations like he has for shooting savages in the Soudan because, too, as I must live somehow, I do so out of Devene. Well, my most immaculate Edith, and how do you live yourself? Who paid for that pretty dress upon your back, and those pearls? Not Rupert as yet, I suppose? Where did you get the money from with which you helped me once? I wish you would tell me, because I have never seen you work, and I would like to have the secret of plenty for nothing.”