“I see you still hate me, my lady,” said Arabella, smiling. “You have not yet forgiven me that the duke, your husband, found more delight in my young, handsome face, than in yours, now growing old—that my sprightly, wanton disposition pleased him better than your cold, stately air.”
The duchess turned pale with rage, and her eyes darted lightning. “Silence, you shameless creature! silence, or I will call my servants to rid me of you!”
“You will not call them; for I have come to be reconciled with you, and to offer you peace.”
“Peace with you!” sneered the duchess—“peace with that shameless woman who stole from me my husband, the father of my children?—who loaded me with the disgrace of standing before the whole world as a repudiated and despised wife, and of suffering myself to be compared with you, that the world might decide which of us two was worthier of his love? Peace with you, Miss Holland?—with the impudent strumpet who squanders my husband’s means in lavish luxury, and, with scoffing boldness, robs my children of their lawful property?”
“It is true, the duke is very generous,” said Miss Holland, composedly. “He loaded me with diamonds and gold.”
“And meanwhile I was doomed almost to suffer want,” said the duchess, grinding her teeth.
“Want of love, it may be, my lady, but not want of money; for you are very magnificently fitted up; and every one knows that the Duchess of Norfolk is rich enough to be able to spare the trifles that her husband laid at my feet. By Heaven! my lady, I would not have deemed it worth the trouble to stoop for them, if I had not seen among these trifles his heart. The heart of a man is well worth a woman’s stooping for! You have neglected that, my lady, and therefore you lost your husband’s heart. I picked it up. That is all. Why will you make a crime of that?”
“That is enough!” cried the duchess. “It does not become me to dispute with you; I desire only to know what gave you the courage to come to me?”
“My lady, do you hate me only? Or do you also hate the duke your husband?”
“She asks me whether I hate him!” cried the duchess, with a wild, scornful laugh. “Yes, Miss Holland, yes! I hate him as ardently as I despise you. I hate him so much that I would give my whole estate—ay, years of my life—if I could punish him for the disgrace he has put upon me.”