"No; I am like yourself—I spare not. You have merited this, and a thousand times more from me, and you shall listen now. That you married me for my wealth and for the power it would give you, I know only too well. You were an unnatural child, and I might have known you would be an unnatural woman; but I willfully blinded my eyes, and believed what you told me that accursed night on the sea-shore, and I married you—fool that I was! I braved the scorn of the world, the sneers of my friends, the just anger of my mother, and stooped—are you listening, Georgia?—and stooped to wed you. And now I have my reward."
"Oh, Richmond! I shall go mad!" she wailed, writhing in her seat, and feeling as if every fiber in her heart were tearing from its place, so intense was her anguish.
But still the clear, clarion-like voice rang out on the air like a death-bell, cold, calm, and pitiless as the grave:
"Once, in one of your storms of passion, madam, you asked me why I married you. Now I answer you: because I was mad, demented, besotted, crazed, or I most assuredly should never have dreamed of such a thing. Perhaps you wish I had not, for then the gallant sailor you admire so much might have taken it into his hair-brained head to do what I did in a fit of insanity—for which a life of misery like this is to atone—and married you. That I have deprived you of this happiness, I deeply regret; for, madam, much as you may repent this marriage, you can never, never repent it half as much as I do now."
She had fallen at his feet, whether from physical weakness, or whether she had writhed there in her intolerable agony, he did not know, and, at that moment, did not care. He stepped back, looked down upon her as she lay a moment, and went on:
"I fancied I loved you well enough then to brave the whole world for your sake; but that, like all the rest of my short brain-fever, has completely passed away. What feeling can one have for a murderess—for such in heart you are—but one of horror and loathing?"
She sprang to her feet with a moaning cry, and stood before him with one arm half raised; her lips opened as if to speak, but no voice came forth.
"Hear me out, madam," he interposed, waving his hand, "for it is the last time, perhaps, you will ever be troubled by a word from me. You have driven my guests from my house, you have eternally disgraced me, and, lest you should murder the very servants next, must not be allowed to go free. While a friend of mine resides under this roof you shall remain locked a close prisoner in your room, as a lunatic too dangerous to be at large. And if that does not subdue the fiend within you, one thing yet remains for me to do—that I may go free once more."
He paused, and the rage he had subdued by the strength of his mighty will all along, showed now in the death-like whiteness of his face, white even to his lips, like the white ashes over red-hot coals.
Again her arm was faintly raised, again her trembling lips parted, but the power of speech seemed to have been suddenly taken from her. No sound came forth.