She paused for breath; her bosom rose and fell, she put her hands to her throat as if she choked. It was a moment before she could speak.
“What have you done?” she went on passionately, her slender figure towering, her eyes on fire; “you have torn him from my arms, you have sent him to his death, but you cannot tear him from my heart! While that beats, while the blood runs through these veins, I will love him—love him! And he is my husband—my husband, do you hear, you coward? I bear his name, I am his, his flesh and blood, his very own—you cannot separate us! Even if you kill him, our souls are one; you cannot part them any more than you can rend the sky asunder! I am not your sister—I am Clancarty’s wife.”
“Shame on you, madam,” said Spencer bitterly, his face like ashes, gray and white; “shame on you to declare yourself so passionately enamoured of a Jacobite—a reprobate—a—”
“Of my husband,” she said, and her low voice cut like a lash.
“Your husband,” he mocked; “are you sure that he is your lawful husband? A sneaking rogue who crept to your room by a back-stair—who would not face your family like a man of honor!”
“What insult more have you for me?” she cried; “’tis you who dared not face him; you crept behind him like a coward, you—you Judas!”
She caught her breath, her hands at her throat again.
“Sit down, madam,” said his lordship coldly; “your fury suffocates you. It will not avail,” he laughed, “to set the rogue free!”
She looked at him strangely.
“Are you human?” she asked, “are you like other men?—or some monster, some abortive creature, cast upon the earth to wreck the lives of others? How could any woman marry you? I think you are not human—though we are of the same mother!”