This pacified Alice, who already began to feel faint with her exertions, and she crept back to bed, while Marian descended the stairs, going first to Dinah as she had promised, and then with a beating heart turning her steps toward the library. It was much like facing the wild beast in its lair, confronting Frederic in his present savage mood. He felt himself as if his reason were overturned, for the deliberate giving up of Marian Grey, and the feeling that he should probably never look upon her face again, had stirred, as it were, the very depths of his heart’s blood, and in a state of mind bordering upon distraction, he was making the necessary preparations for his hasty journey, when a timid knock was heard outside the door.
“Who’s there? I’m very busy,” was his loud, imperious answer, but Marian was not to be thus baffled, and turning the knob, she entered without further ceremony, recoiling back a pace or two when she met the expression of Frederic’s eye.
With his hands full of papers, which he was thrusting into his pocket, his hair disordered and his face white as ashes, he turned toward her, saying; “Why are you here, Miss Grey? Haven’t you caused me pain enough already? Have you received my note?”
“I have,” she answered, advancing still further into the room. “And I have come to ask you what it means. You have no right to dismiss me so suddenly without an explanation. How have I offended? You must tell me.”
“I said you had not offended,” he replied, “and further than that I can give no explanation.”
“I shall not leave your house, nor yet this room until you do,” was her decided answer, and with the air of one who meant what she said, Marian went so near to the excited man that he could have touched her had he chosen.
For an instant the two stood gazing at each other, Marian never wavering for an instant, while over Frederic’s face there flitted alternately a look of wonder, admiration, and perplexity. Then that look passed away and was succeeded by an expression of the deep love he felt for beautiful girl standing so fearlessly before him.
“I cannot help it,” he murmured at last, and tottering to the door, he turned the key; then returning to Marian, he compelled her to sit down beside him upon the sofa, and passing his arm around her, so that she could not escape, he began: “You say you will not leave the room until you know why I should send you from me. Be it so, then. It surely cannot be wrong for me to tell when you thus tempt me to the act; so, for one brief half-hour, you are mine—mine, Marian, and no power can save you now from hearing what I have to say.”
His looks, even more than his manner, frightened her, and she said imploringly, “Give me the key, Mr. Raymond. Unlock the door and I will go away without hearing the reason.”
“I frighten you, then,” he answered, in a gentler tone, drawing her nearer to him, “and yet, Marian Grey, I would sell my life inch by inch rather than harm a hair of your dear head. Oh, Marian, Marian, I would to Heaven you had never crossed my path, for then I should not have known what it is to love as madly, as hopelessly, as wickedly as I now love you. What made you come to me in all your bright, girlish beauty, or why did Heaven suffer me to love you as I do? My punishment was before as great as I could bear, and now I must suffer this anguish, too. Oh, Marian Grey, Marian Grey!”