Reynolds stood like a bronze statue, his eyes burning with a dull fire and his face seamed and shriveled.
Ransom clung to his wife, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek. His ecstasy was genuine, but it lacked the force of lofty passion.
Presently Agnes freed herself from his embrace, quite as suddenly as she had sought it, as if some revulsion of feeling or some strong conviction of the impropriety of such extreme action had mastered her. She looked at Reynolds, and meeting his gloomy, despairing gaze, let fall her eyes, a quick blush covering her cheeks. In that moment all the force of her surroundings rushed furiously upon her. The blush gave place to a deadly paleness that appeared to affect her face as a white heat. She put up one hand quickly, as if to touch her forehead, but lowered it again, staggered and fell. Both men sprang to her assistance. Reynolds brushed the other aside, as he might have brushed aside some insect. Then lifting Agnes in his arms he bore her to the house. He did this in a mood that eliminated from his thought, for the time, all else save the woman he loved. He carried her without at all feeling her weight, and his movement was so swift that Ransom did not try to keep pace with him; but followed him with slow, feeble steps into the hall and thence into the parlor. But it had not been a swoon, only a mere vanishing from her of strength sufficient to stand. She raised herself to a sitting posture, so soon as Reynolds put her on a sofa, and looked at him with an immediate understanding of what had happened. Ransom had not yet come in.
"Where is he—Herbert, my husband—where is he?" she asked.
"Oh, Agnes! Agnes!" cried Reynolds, taking her again in his arms. "It can not be so! you can not, you will not, you shall not give me up for him!"
She sprang away from him and stood up pale and firm before him.
"Do not touch me again," she exclaimed, in a way that sent the blood in upon his heart. "You have no right. He is my husband. You said he was dead. You said—you—you deceived me—told me a falsehood—you—"
"For heaven's sake, Agnes, hold—don't say that! I told you true. I thought he was dead—I thought I killed him—I did not dream of his being alive!"
Ransom was standing by now glancing keenly from one to the other. When he spoke it was directly to Reynolds.
"If my wife wishes to talk longer with you, well and good, sir, but if not, you must see the propriety of leaving her to me." His manner was suave, but there was a mighty meaning in his voice and a steely glitter in his eyes.