She struggled under his detaining hand, anxious to escape, yet not wishing to make a scene.
“You were engaged to her, yet you made love to me; that is enough for me to know,” she answered, turning crimson in her humiliation; but her indifference and eagerness to get away only made him more determined to conquer her pride.
“Pansy, you are driving me mad,” he cried imploringly; then, with sudden passion, he added: “Unless you will sit still and listen to what I have to say to you, I swear I will drown myself before your eyes!”
CHAPTER VI.
A HAPPY EXCURSION.
Pansy was so startled by the threat of her desperate lover that she sank back into her seat without a word, her slight form trembling with terror. She certainly did not want him to drown himself, although he had treated her so cruelly.
So she consented to listen to him. There could be no great harm in that, for it would not alter her opinion of him at all. He had been false to Juliette Ives and false to her. She was quite sure that she despised him, although her heart was beating furiously as she looked up into the pale, impassioned face, with its eager, burning dark eyes, that seemed fairly to devour her white, startled young face.
Now that he had his chance, he improved it in eloquent fashion. He explained everything clearly, making her understand that he was not the villain they made him out, and that if he were to blame in any way it was for breaking loose from the bonds that held him to a girl whose selfishness and cruelty had changed his love to hate.
“If I ever really loved her, which seems doubtful to me now,” he said. “It was last winter that we became engaged, and, although I admired her fair face and enjoyed her society, I swear to you, Pansy, that the thought of marrying her never crossed my mind until one night in the conservatory, when I was, somehow, drawn into asking her to marry me. I hardly know how it was, unless it was the romance of the moment. You remember the lines:
“Azure eyes, golden hair, scented robes—
“They had crazed my hot, foolish brain then.