"Leave the room, if you please," said she, while the indignant crimson suffused her cheeks. "I have nothing to say to you, sir!"
"Nothing? surely it were wiser, Lily, to try to make terms with me than to bandy angry words. Remember you are in my power. I love you, and I want your love in return. But, proud girl, beware how you change my love into hate."
"Mr. Colville," said she, "it is cruel, it is unmanly thus to persecute a defenseless girl. I beseech you, restore me to my home and my father. Think of my poor father, my suffering sister. There are other women who will love you, women who have not given away their hearts as I have done."
"There is but one woman on earth to me, Lily, and I have sworn to make her my own. You cannot move me by all you say—as well try to topple a mountain from its base as to move me from my firm will. Better, far better were it for you, Lily Lawrence, to waive all this useless pleading, make yourself as charming as you well know how to do, and become my wife. If you still persist in refusing there may be worse things in store for you."
She could not misunderstand the insulting meaning of his angry speech. The hot blood flushed into her face, then receded and left her pale as death. In bitter shame at his rudeness she bowed her face in her hands.
"You understand me," said he with a low, malignant laugh; "so much the better! Now listen to reason, Lily. I love you, and you are in my power! you are dead to the world, dead to the father who reared you, the sister who loved you, the man you would have wedded. Consent to marry me, and within an hour after I call you my wife you shall see your friends again, and tell them the romantic story of my love, and how it saved your life; you can tell them that such devotion won you to reward my fidelity with your hand. All this I offer you in good faith and honor, and give you time for decision. But refuse—and—well, you know you are still in my power!"
She rose and stood confronting him in all the pride and dignity of outraged and insulted purity. She was rarely, peerlessly beautiful with that scarlet tide staining her cheeks, that lightning flash in the violet eyes.
"Villain, coward, dog!" she cried, in the white heat of passionate resentment, "how dare you threaten me thus? Know that I defy you! I spurn you! I will never be your wife! I will die first, do you hear me? I will die by my own hand rather than be so disgraced."
"Rave on, my beauty," he answered, laughing tauntingly. "Flap your pretty wings against your prison bars, my little bird, you will only ruffle your feathers in vain. By Jove, you only make me more determined! I never saw you so beautiful, so utterly fascinating! I did not think you had so queenly a spirit, my fair one! you would make your fortune on the tragic stage!"
"Oh! go, go," she gasped, lifting her hand with a wild gesture toward the door, "go, leave me, unless you wish to see me dying!"