"How I have dreaded this meeting! I feared it must be before them all. Oh, Marius! Marius!" She ended in a broken wail and drew her hands away and hid her face.
"You are different," said Marius in a foolish wonder. She seemed so much older, so much whiter and haggard, too. In a confused way he marvelled at it.
"Different," she echoed; then she laughed. "I am your brother's wife!"
Marius stepped back.
"My God!" he said in his throat, and mechanically laid hold of his sword hilt. "My God! What are we going to do?"
The Countess Lavinia cowered against the wall.
"You must go away. I followed you to ask you to leave the house at once—to go away. With you here I cannot bear it: do you hear me?"
The foolish quiescence into which the shock had at first stunned him began to give way to a rising passion that thawed his heart.
"His wife!" The blood rose to his face, his eyes. "How dared you become his wife—huckstered for your money——"