I was very much astonished. Neither his voice nor look was playful. His face at the moment wore about the most disagreeable expression which human face can wear. That of a smile, not a genuine but a pretended smile, which, at the same time, the person who smiles affects to try to suppress. To me it looks cruel, cynical, mean. I was so amazed, as he looked into my eyes with this cunning, shabby smile, that I could not say a word, and stood stock-still looking in return, in stupid wonder, in his face.
At length I broke out, very pale, for I was shocked, "I can't understand! What is it? Oh, Richard, what can you mean?"
"Now don't be a little fool. I really believe you are going to cry. You are a great deal too clever, you lovely little rogue, to fancy that a girl's tears ever yet did any good. Listen to me; come!"
He walked away, still smiling that insulting smile, and he took my hand in his, and shook his finger at me, with the same cynical affectation of the playful. "What did I mean?"
"Yes, what can you mean?" I stamped the emphasis on the floor, with tears in my eyes. "It is cruel, it is horrible, after our long separation."
"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," he said, and for a moment the smile almost degenerated to a sneer. "Look here; come to the window."
I faltered; I accompanied him to it, looking in his face in an agony of alarm and surprise. It seemed to me like the situation of a horrid dream.
"Do you know how I amused myself during the last twenty miles of my railway journey?" he said. "Well, I'll tell you: I was reading all that time a curious criminal trial, in which a most respectable old gentleman, aged sixty-seven, has just been convicted of having poisoned a poor girl forty years ago, and is to be hanged for it before three weeks!"
"Well?" said I, with an effort—I should not have known my own voice, and I felt a great ball in my throat.
"Well?" he repeated; "don't you see?"