He sprung to her side and laid his hand heavily upon her arm. But she shook off his grasp and faced him bravely, her small head uplifted in conscious pride, her beautiful dark eyes shining like stars.
“Dare to touch me again!” she panted, breathlessly. “Dare to lay your hand upon me, Gilbert Warrington, and I will have you punished as you deserve.”
“Who will make the attempt? Who will venture to make such an attempt, pray?” he sneered. “Your fine gentleman lover, Leonard Yorke? Mr. Leonard Yorke, of Yorke Towers, who makes fierce love to you one hour, and in the next is pouring forth his very heart at the dainty feet of your pretty cousin, Hilda Rutledge? Why, it is common talk throughout the neighborhood that Leonard Yorke is playing fast and loose with you, and really does not know which is the most charming, you or Hilda. They hint, however, that while he is dead in love with Miss Rutledge, who is poor, he still keeps his hold upon you, the supposed heiress to the Arleigh fortune.”
She caught the tone of ill-concealed derision in his voice, and her heart sunk low in her breast with a sharp pang.
“The ‘supposed heiress’?” she repeated, eagerly. “Will you kindly explain your object in using the term ‘supposed,’ Mr. Warrington?”
His eyes glittered with a fiendish light.
“Oh, so you have come down to business at last?” he sneered. “To be sure, I will explain with pleasure. My dear Miss Arleigh, you must know that I hold in my possession a secret—a family secret of the Arleighs—which, if it were made public, would ruin you forever in the eyes of society and the world in general. Once known by the world of society, and it will blight and destroy your happiness; it will make you a very outcast, a pariah among men. Leonard Yorke will turn coldly from you, and his love will die.”
“If his love is worth no more than that,” intervened Violet, hotly, “it will be better for it to die. But I thought you said that he loved Hilda?”
Gilbert Warrington bit his lip. In his eagerness to wound and pique Violet, he had forgotten his own words of a few moments previous.
He smiled coldly.