“Woman! you are mad! Get out, and leave me in peace! I am no murderer, although you almost persuade me to be one now! Get out, or by God I’ll—”
“No! You won’t murder me. You cannot get away from me like you ran from Havre! I am not afraid of you, although I am a woman.”
“You are no woman, or you would not come here to torment me like this. You know I never hurt that girl. God knows I did not do it; whatever else I may have done, I am innocent of that crime, and if the poor girl is dead, no one would wish to get her back to life more than I do, as she could prove my innocence. For God’s sake, Clara, stop. You must be mad, or you would not talk like this. Think of the past between us, think of—”
“Yes, I do think of the past, and that makes me act now. I am no more mad than you are; but I have sworn to ruin you, and I will keep my oath. Do you know where I am going to now?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said sullenly, “only for God’s sake, leave me in peace, and go away.”
He was quite broken down now, and the expression of the woman’s strong hate, coupled with all he had gone through, made him nerveless and hopeless. She still went on in the same tone of fiendish glee: her feelings seemed to have overcome her reason.
“I am going now to have you charged with murder. Murder, do you hear? The French police were on your track. We will see what the English police will do now. You will get out, will you? You think you will escape! Bah! Just wait and see.”
“Hang you! Go away, will you. You are raving!” he said: he really thought her mad.
“Hang me? Not quite; but you will be hanged though, and then I will die happy!” she exclaimed, with the passion still in her eyes, in her gestures, in her very form and figure.
Markworth was seated in a corner of the private room in which they were speaking (Mr Abednego charged a guinea a day for the accommodation of the same), and his attitude betokened intense misery and hopelessness. It was not so much the words of his adversary, but the thought that she, too, was against him, like all the rest of the world. He was quite broken down, now.