'Melfort, d—n you!' he retorted coarsely, and losing all command over himself.
Tears now sprang to her eyes, and then, as he half feared to carry the matter so far with her, he apologized.
'Let me pass, sir,' said she.
'Won't you give me one little kiss first, Dulcie?'
She made no reply, but fixed her lovely dark blue eyes upon him with an expression of such loathing and contempt that even he was stung to the heart by it.
'Let me pass, sir!' she exclaimed again.
He stood aside to let her do so, and she swept by, holding her golden head haughtily erect; but Dulcie feared him now more than ever, and certainly she had roused revenge in his heart, with certain vague emotions of alarm.
Of all the thousands of homes in Scotland and England how miserable and unlucky was the chance that cast her under the same roof with the evil-minded Shafto! thought the girl in the solitude of her own room. But then, otherwise, she would never have known and shared the sweet and flattering friendship of Finella Melfort; and, as she never knew what wicked game Shafto might play, he would perhaps succeed in depriving her even of that solace as the end of his persecution.
The whole tenor of the conversation or interview forced upon her by Shafto impressed her with a keen and deep sense of humiliation that made her weep bitterly; how much more keen would the sense of that have been had she known what in the purity of her nature she never suspected, that, amid all his grotesque love-making, marriage was no way comprehended in his scheme!
Much as she disliked Shafto, an emotion of delicacy, with a timid doubt of the future with regard to Captain Hammersley, and what was behind that future with regard to 'the cousins,' as she of course deemed them to be, induced Dulcie to remain silent with Finella on the subject of his persistent and secret attentions to herself, though she would have deplored to see Finella the wife of Shafto.