"Believe me," he assured her, retaining his grasp of the door-handle, "there is some one who would rather that all the rest of us should slip over the fourth dimension than have you undertake the rôle of vanishing lady. Darwin applies all round, remember, and to Tony's way of thinking you are the fittest in all the world."
A dangerous gleam darted into the girl's eyes, and she stamped her foot passionately.
"How dare you offer me such an insult? Haven't you done enough yet to make yourself hateful to me? Have you no shame whatsoever? Be silent, I tell you—be silent!"
He made a gesture of despair.
"Of all the unreasonable people! Now, why should listening to a simple statement of facts cause you to get into such a temper?"
"Why?—why, indeed! You can't see; oh dear no, it's quite beyond your comprehension, isn't it? Learn this, then: though you have made me a more degraded creature than I ever before realised, you haven't killed all my soul, neither shall you."
"Souls at this moment! Good gracious, my dear girl, I only wish I had made you a bit more practical. But there, I fear you're utterly incorrigible. Poor old Tony mayn't be quite your ideal knight, but do try to realise that while sugar-icing forms a charming coating for a cake, the cake is just as sustaining without it. Are you positively so blinded by silly sentimentality as to be really incapable of seeing any cause for congratulation in the lucky chance that has led him to take a fancy to you? A good-hearted fellow with plenty of money. What more can you want?"
Anger had found small place in the girl's breast while she was being made to realise the dread truth that her lover was finally weary of her and of her affection; nor had even lasting indignation awoken until he taunted her with the display of bitter grief that this very knowledge had evoked. When he thus persisted in what she could but deem the last of insults—this determination to regard her only as a light toy, to be tossed from one man to another—then the capacity for wild wrath that she derived from her violent low-born mother, and a long line of fiery-tempered maternal ancestors, showed itself in all its power.
Up to the present her own personal gentleness of spirit, aided by the trend of her education, and the affection by which she had always been encircled, had sufficed to keep even the girl herself in ignorance of the capacity that lay dormant in her blood for feeling and displaying wild fury. Now, in circumstances provocative of wrath such as had never yet occurred in the whole range of her limited experience, she became entirely her mother's daughter.
"If ever again I touch a farthing of such money may I fall down dead!" she cried wildly. "That's my only answer. Oh! It's the devil gives money to men of your stamp, so that you may with more certainty work out your own damnation."