'Hate you,' he faltered, utterly crushed and bewildered by her words. His eyes were lurid now, for anger again mingled with love in them. 'Surely this is all some bad dream, from which I must awaken.'
'It is no dream,' said Annot, turning with an unsteady step as if she would pass him; but he barred her way.
'Do you mean that you loved some one else?' he asked.
'Do not ask me.'
'I have the right to do so!'
'No, Roland—you have not.'
'You surely did at one time love me, Annot, or your duplicity is monstrous, till—till this fellow Hoyle came upon the tapis? Was it not so?' he asked, almost piteously, for his moods varied quickly.
'Not quite; and I can't be poor, that is the plain English of it; I can't be a struggling man's wife, as I now know yours must be, as Earlshaugh——'
'Belongs to another, and not to me, you mean?'
She was silent. Selfish though she was to the heart's core, a blush crossed her cheek, a genuine blush of shame at her own blunt openness, and it was but too evident that she had schooled herself for all this—had screwed her courage to the sticking point.