He approached a step nearer.
“Madam—Madam!” screams Diana—shrinking back—“You’ve a woman’s heart. You won’t see a poor girl terrified to death. Help me, unbind my hands! O, Madam.”
The woman by the fire turned slowly with gleaming eyes. Mrs. Bishop.
Then indeed for a moment the victim knew despair for there was that in the woman’s face to make her tremble. Hatred, fury—every violent passion might have been depicted from her silent look and clenched hands. But not a word did she speak, and was the more dreadful.
“Hold your noise!” cries Macheath, very fierce and flushed with anger. “You do but hurt your own cause. ’Tis for me to command and you to obey and this lady is here for a witness. Hear then my purpose——”
There was a little of the playhouse rant about him as he stepped back and flung out his fine chest with the true highwayman’s air. He was fool enough to relish his part in the acting.
“ ’Tis my purpose to wed you immediately, Mrs. Fenton, and many an actor has played lover to his own wife on the boards, and ’tis that I intend. There’s money and love and joy in the future I offer you and many a fine lady would leap at the chance. ’Tis perhaps unknown to you the love letters I have by the score from handsome heiresses that know a man when they see him. I wager yourself has not so many.”
“Stow all this talk,” says Mrs. Bishop, sharply. “Can’t you see, man, what she needs is the whip not the honeycomb? She’s in love with my Lord Baltimore. Is she likely to accept to be an honest man’s wife when she can be a peer’s Miss? and rob a better woman than herself!”
“Baltimore!” Diana could scarce articulate, so terrible was the woman. “Mrs. Bishop, you are most frightfully mistook. I loathe the man. His mere presence oppresses me. Is it possible— O how blind I have been! Yourself loves him? Then take him, and I’ll bless the day that rids me of a man I hate.”
She could not clasp her hands but stretched them forth beseechingly. How came it she had never seen nor suspected the true cause of the woman’s jealousy? O blind that she had been! She saw Mrs. Bishop far more to be feared than the weak handsome fool that swaggered so big and loud before them. Her one aim must be to convince her. The man was the lesser danger.