It was rejected. They walked on, not exchanging a word.
When they parted in New York, Jacob gave full vent to his indignation, and hastened home to pour out his fury on Margaret, who had so seriously interfered with his plan of allying himself with one for whom he cared little, except that she would have brought him a small property which he coveted. He hurried up stairs, and dashed into the room occupied by Margaret and himself. He looked about him eagerly, but saw no one.
Margaret had disappeared.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MARGARET’S FLIGHT.
When Margaret left Staten Island after her stormy interview with Jacob Wynne, it was with a fevered brain, and a heart torn with the fiercest emotions. This man, whom despite his unworthiness, she had loved with all the intensity of her woman’s nature, had spurned her affection, had ruthlessly thrown it back upon her, and with a cold refinement of cruelty had acknowledged without reserve the gross deception he had practised upon her.
There are some of sensitive natures that would shrink and die under such treatment. Margaret was differently constituted. The blow was terrible, but she did not give way under it. It hardened her whole nature, and excited in her a burning thirst for vengeance. Strong in hate as in love, there sprang up in her soul a determined purpose, that, as Jacob Wynne had ruthlessly laid waste the garden of her life, she would never rest till she had made his as desolate as her own.
During the half-hour spent from wharf to wharf, she paced the deck of the steamer with hasty strides, her shawl clasped tightly over her throbbing bosom, and her face concealed as before by the capacious sun-bonnet. She heeded not that she was the object of curious attention on the part of her fellow-passengers. She never noticed how sedulously the children avoided coming in her way—what glances, half of wonder, half of awe, they cast upon the tall, stately, ill-dressed woman who strode by them with such an impatient step. She had far other thoughts to occupy her. She could not force herself to sit down. With her mind in such a whirl, motion was absolutely necessary. Her hands were fiercely clenched till the nails penetrated the skin, and caused the blood to flow, but she neither saw the blood nor felt the injury.
At length they reached the slip. She disembarked with the other passengers, and with the same quick, hasty, impatient strides hurried through the streets, choosing instinctively the most obscure and unfrequented, until she reached the lodgings occupied by Jacob and herself.
Here she sat down for a few minutes, and looked about her.
The room was more ambitiously furnished than when first the reader was introduced to it. Jacob’s connection with Lewis Rand had given him a push upward, and enabled him to live more comfortably than before. But in this prosperity Margaret had not been permitted to participate. She had asked even humbly for money to provide herself with more comfortable and befitting clothing, but Jacob, with cold selfishness, had refused all her applications. He had grown tired of her, and, as we have seen, had already formed a plan by which he hoped, through marriage, to get possession of a small property which would place his new prosperity on a more permanent footing. His treatment of Margaret, therefore, was only part of a deliberate plan to rid himself of her, and thus remove the only obstacle to the success of his suit. He had not indeed intended to reveal his plans to her until marriage had secured the property he coveted. We have seen how Margaret’s jealous espionage forced a premature disclosure of his object, and even defeated it altogether.