All this change was manifest in her look and tone as she again addressed Mrs. Dunbar.
“You have all mistaken me,” said she, with bitter hostility; “you have imagined that you had to deal with some silly child. But this shall do none of you any good. You may kill me among you, but I am not afraid to die. Death itself will be welcome rather than submission to that foul miscreant, that vulgar coward, who takes advantage of a contemptible trick, and pretends that there was a marriage. I say this to you—that I defy him and all of you, and will defy you all—yes, to the bitter end; and you may go and tell this to your wretched confederates.”
As Edith said this, Mrs. Dunbar looked at her; and if there could have appeared upon that face the signs of a wounded heart—a heart cut and stung to its inmost fibre—the face that confronted Edith showed all this at that moment.
“Confederates!” she repeated.
“Yes, you and Wiggins and this villain who, you say, is now living here.”
“What, Leon!”
“Leon! Is that his name! Leon Dudleigh! Well, whatever name he chooses to bear, it is all the same; though it seems strange that he should adopt a stainless name like that of Dudleigh.”
“Yes, that is his name,” said Mrs. Dunbar, wearily.
“Till he assumes some other,” said Edith. “But they are all assumed names,” she continued, bitterly—“Mowbray and Dudleigh and Dunbar also, no doubt. Why you should call yourself Dunbar I can't imagine. You seem to me to be Mrs. Wiggins. Wiggins at least can not be an assumed name.”
At these words, which were spoken on the spur of the moment, out of mere hostility toward Mrs. Dunbar, and the desire to wound her, the latter recoiled as though from some sudden blow, and looked at Edith with awful eyes.