Her hatred for the pale-cheeked Italian re-accumulated every drop of its former venom, as with an air of affectionate gratitude she accepted her assistance.
It is a psychological peculiarity of certain human beings that the more they hate, the more they crave, with a curious perverted instinct, some sort of physical contact with the object of their hatred.
Every touch of Lacrima’s hand increased the intensity of Gladys’ loathing; and yet, so powerful is the instinct to which I refer, she lost no opportunity of accentuating the contact between them, letting their fingers meet again and again, and even their breath, and throwing back her rounded chin to make it easier for those hated wrists to busy themselves about her throat. Her general air was an air of playful passivity; but at one moment, imprinting a kiss on the girl’s arm as, in the process of arranging her veil, it brushed across her cheek, she seemed almost anxious to convey to Lacrima the full implication of her real feeling.
Never has a human caress been so electric with the vibrations of antipathy, as was that kiss. She followed up this signal of animosity by a series of feline taunts relative to John Goring, one of which, from its illuminated insight into the complex strata of the girl’s soul, delighted her by its effect.
Lacrima winced under it, as if under the sting of a lash, and a burning flood of scarlet suffused her cheeks. She dropped her hands and stepped back, uttering a fierce vow that nothing—nothing on earth—would induce her to accompany a girl who could say such things, to such a ceremony!
“No, I wouldn’t,—I wouldn’t!” cried Gladys mockingly. “I wouldn’t dream of coming with me! Tomorrow week, anyway, we’re bound to go to church side by side. Father wanted to drive with me then, you know, and to let mother go with you,—but I wouldn’t hear of it! I said they must go in one carriage, and you and I in another, so that our last drive together we should be quite by ourselves. You’ll like that, won’t you, darling?”
Lacrima’s only answer to this was to turn her back to her cousin, and begin putting on her hat and gloves.
“I know where you’re going,” said Gladys. “You’re going to see your dear Maurice. Give him my love! I should be ashamed to let such a wretched coward come near me.
“James—poor boy!—was a fellow of a different metal. He’d some spirit in him. Listen! When that bell stops tolling they’ll be carrying him into the church. I expect you’re thinking now, darling, that it would have been better if you’d treated him differently. Of course you know it’s you that killed him? Oh, nobody else! Just little Lacrima and her coy, demure ways!
“I’ve never killed a man. I can say that, at all events.