"You must have some strong reason."
"I have my reason, an all-sufficient reason; and now, sir, no more, I beg you. Indeed, I wonder that you can distress me by renewing this argument."
"Oh, madam, if you but knew the motive of my impertinence, the anguish of heart that speaks in those words! I would have you happily mated, Antonia. I—I—who adore you. Yes, though my jealous soul could scarce contemplate the image of your husband without the murderer's impulse—though to think of you belonging to another would be a torment worse than hell-fire. Could you know how I have wrestled with Satan; how when I urged you to marry Dunkeld every word I spoke was like a knife driven through my heart; how I longed to fling myself at your feet, to tell you, as I tell you now, at the peril of my salvation, that I love you, with all the strength of my soul, my soul drowned in sin, the unpardonable sin of loving you, the sin for which I must lose heaven and reckon with Satan, my darling sin, the sin unto death, never to be repented of."
He was on his knees, and his arms were about her, drawing her averted face towards his own with a wild violence, till her brow touched his, and his lips were pressed against her burning cheek. She felt the passion of his kiss, and his tears upon her face, before she wrenched herself from his arms, and dashed down the glass in front of her.
"Stop!" she called out to the postillions.
Startled at her authoritative cry, they pulled up their horses suddenly, with a loud clattering on the stones, a hundred yards from the bridge.
"You devil!" she said to Stobart, between her set teeth. "You that I took for a saint! I will not breathe the same air with you."
The carriage had hardly stopped when she opened the door and sprang out, not waiting for her footman to let down the steps. He had been asleep in the rumble, and only alighted a moment before his mistress.
She walked towards the bridge in a tumult of agitation, Stobart at her side, while her carriage and horses stood still, and her servants waited for orders, wondering at this strange caprice of their lady's.
"Hypocrite! hypocrite!" she repeated. "You—the Christian, the preacher who calls sinners to repentance; the man who sacrificed fortune to marry the girl he loved."