All of which Blaise bore with a curious, stoical self-control. It seemed as though the Tormarin temper had been exorcised, as if that fierce storm of anger provoked by Madame de Varigny’s taunts, and which had so nearly resulted in a tragedy, had shocked Blaise into realisation of the terrible latent possibilities of the family failing and the absolute necessity for an iron self-government.
For weeks he supported Nesta’s petty gibes and ebullitions of temper with illimitable patience, and it was only when, trading on his unaccustomed forbearance, she ventured too far, that she was brought very suddenly to understand that there was a limit beyond which she might not go.
“I know why you no longer love me,” she told him at last, on an occasion when she had been vainly endeavouring, by every feminine blandishment and wile of which she was mistress, to evoke from him some sign of an awakening tendresse. “I know!”
She nodded her dark head significantly, while pin-points of jealous anger flickered in her long, narrow eyes, black as midnight.
“Then, if you know,” replied Tormarin patiently, “it is surely most foolish of you to keep asking why I do not. Why can’t you content yourself with things as they are, Nesta? We can only try to make the best of a bad job. You don’t help me much in the matter.”
“I don’t want to help you,” she retorted viciously. “I want you to love me. And you won’t, because of that washed-out-looking, carroty-haired woman who is living with Lady Latimer. And she’s in love with you, too!... No! I won’t be quiet! Oh!”—her voice rising hysterically—“you think I don’t notice things, but I do. I do, I tell you!”
She sprang up from the couch, where she had been lolling indolently amid a heap of cushions, and crossed the room to his side.
“Do you hear me?” she cried violently, shaking him by the arm. “You think I’m a blind fool! But I’m not! I’m not! I’ve seen that Peterson woman looking at you like a cat looking through the larder window——”
Suddenly she felt Blaise’s hand clapped against her lips, stemming the torrent of vulgar recrimination and abuse that poured from them. He held it there quite gently, so as not to hurt her, but immovably, and she had perforce to hear what he wished to say in rebellious silence.
“Listen to me,” he said gently. “It is quite true what you say—that I love Jean Peterson and that she loves me. But we have given up our love, and with it our hope of happiness in this world, for you. In return, you will give up something for us. You will give up the infinite pleasure you appear to derive from vilifying and belittling a woman who is as much above you as the heavens are above the earth, whose conception of love is as fine and pure as yours is mean and commonplace and jealous. You will never again speak to Miss Peterson with anything but respect, nor will you ever again refer to the love which you now know for a fact exists between us. Your lips soil such love as ours. If you do, if you disobey my commands in either of these respects, you go out of my house that same day. And you don’t return.”