"I am so sorry you should think it necessary to come with me."
"You mean you are sorry that I should snatch a brief and perilous joy—half an hour in your company—after having abstained from pleasure and peril so long."
"If you are going to talk nonsense, I shall go back to the house and ask your mother to send me home in her brougham."
"Then I won't talk nonsense. I don't want to offend you; and you are so easily offended. Something offended you in our duets. What was it, I wonder? Some ignorant sin of mine? some passage played troppo appassionato? some cantabile phrase that sounded like a sigh from an over-laden heart! Did the music speak too plainly, Suzette?"
"This is too bad of you!" exclaimed Suzette, pale with anger. "You take a mean advantage of finding me alone here. I won't walk another step with you!"
She turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction as she spoke; but she was some distance from the house, at least ten minutes' walk, and her heart sank at the thought of how much Geoffrey Wornock could say to her in ten minutes. Her heart was beating violently, louder and faster than she had ever felt it beat. Did it matter so much what nonsense he might talk to her—idle breath from idle lips? Yes, it seemed to her to matter very much. She would be guilty of unpardonable treason to Allan if she let this man talk. It seemed to her as if these wild words of his—mere rodomontade—made an epoch in her life.
He seized her by the arm with passionate vehemence, but not roughly.
"Suzette! Suzette! you must—you shall hear me!" he said. "Go which way you will, I go with you. I did not mean to speak. I have tried—honestly—to avoid you. Short of leaving this place altogether, I have done my uttermost. But Fate meant us to meet, you see. Fate lamed my horse—the soundest hunter of them all. Fate sent you by this lonely path at the nick of time. You shall hear me! Say what you like to me when you have heard. Be as hard, as cruel, as constant to your affianced lover as you please; but you shall know that you have another lover—a lover who has been silent till to-night, but who loves you with a love which is his doom. Who says that about love and doom? Shakespeare or Tennyson, I suppose. Those two fellows have said everything."
"Mr. Wornock, you are very cruel," she faltered. "You know how sincerely I am attached to your mother, and that I wouldn't for the world do anything to wound her feelings, but you are making it impossible for me ever to enter her house again."
"Why impossible? You are trembling, Suzette. Oh, my love! my dear, dear girl, you tremble at my touch. My words go home to your heart. Suzette, that other man has not all your heart. If he had, you would not have been afraid to go on with our music. If your heart was his, Orpheus himself could not have moved you."