Then, with a passing thought that this was an uncommonly neat speech for a tyro, she launched herself fully on a tide of abuse.
She informed him that she was burdened by the grievances of a lifetime, that she was essentially practical and matter-of-fact, and that she hated a mystery as she hated sin. She had through long, long years chafed against the galling chain of circumstances that bound her to him. It was an insult to her, a creature with a will and judgment of her own, to have been born a slave, to have no means of freeing herself.
“By some means or other you got me into your power,” she uttered, in a voice of quiet, concentrated scorn; “you have tyrannised over me, married me, and in addition to this cowardly act, you have evaded your promises. You are a—”
She brought her goadings to an abrupt stop, for, with his dark face absolutely purple from some emotion, he had suddenly got up, turned his back on her, and was looking out the window.
She had made him angry. In a minute he would be demanding an apology for the plain language she had just uttered. Well, she was in for his displeasure now. She might as well free her mind of every bit of dissatisfaction, every demand for the future lurking in it.
“It is all true,” she said, sullenly; “and I won’t take it back, not a word of it. You would be a far better man to-day, if everybody had told you the truth about yourself as faithfully as I have done. I am not half as much afraid of you as—as those people you call my parents were. Heaven only knows,” desperately, “how you bewitched them, and made them take charge of me. And you have brought me on this voyage to make me fall in love with you, and strengthen your claim to me; but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
She was not shrieking as she usually did in her childish fits of temper. She was progressing, yes, certainly progressing, and the man at the window wearily shrugged his shoulders. This was a more womanly rage. He preferred the childish one. It was more abusive, but not so taunting, so stinging.
Nina, exhausted and trembling as she never before had been after an explosion of wrath, had sunk back on her stool. She had won a victory. She had made him angry, and he would not trouble her again for some time. She wondered how angry he was. He could not go into a temper one minute and out of it the next as she could. Now if his resentment would only last until they got to England—
Just at that moment the not unusual sight of a pocket-handkerchief caused an entire revulsion of feeling in her quarrelsome breast. It was one with “Esteban Fordyce” stamped in one corner, and it lay on the table before her. It was beautifully white and clean, but so coarse, so very coarse. She drew hers from her pocket,—a tiny perfumed piece of muslin, with an edging of valuable lace. What a contrast! She spread it over as much of her face as it would cover, and began to cry stealthily. In a minute it was drenched. She threw it under the table, and took up the other more substantial one.
She was grieving very quietly; still the man at the window must hear her, yet he said never a word. Well, she had called him a coward, and a man does not like to hear that word even from the lips he loves best.