“Jacob,” she said, steadily, “this is not a matter to be deferred. My suspicions have been long excited, and now I want an explanation. I cannot live as I have lived. Sometimes I have feared,” placing her hand upon her brow, “that my head was becoming unsettled.”
“Your coming here to-day is no slight proof of it,” he said, hardly. “I think you are right.”
She threw off this insinuation, cruel as it was, with hardly a thought of what it meant. She had but one object now, and that she must accomplish.
“Enough of this, Jacob,” she said, briefly. “You have not answered my question. This woman,—what is she to you?”
“Suppose I do not choose to tell you,” he answered, doggedly.
“I demand an answer,” said Margaret, resolutely. “I have a right to know.”
The weakest natures are often the most cruel, delighting in the power which circumstances sometimes bestow upon them of torturing those who are infinitely their superiors. There was a cruel malignity in the scrivener’s eyes as he repeated, slowly, “You have a right to know! Deign to inform me of what nature is this right.”
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, startled out of herself by his effrontery. “Have you the face to ask?”
“I have,” he said, his countenance expressing the satisfaction he felt in the blow he meditated.
Margaret looked at him a moment, uncertain of his meaning. Then she took a step forward and placed her hand on his arm, while she looked up in his face with an expression which had changed suddenly from defiance to entreaty.