Again he paused, but this time his companion did not deign to avail herself of the opportunity to reply, if, indeed, she was able to do so.
She had not once removed her glittering eyes from his face, and her steady, inscrutable look gave him an uncanny sensation that was anything but agreeable.
"I have come to propose that we avail ourselves of the only remedy that seems practicable to relieve our peculiar situation," he continued, seeing she was waiting for him to go on. "I will apply to have the tie which binds me to Isabel annulled, with all possible secrecy—it can be done in the West without any notoriety; then I will make you my legal wife, as you have so often asked me to do, and we will go abroad again, where we will try to live out the remainder of our lives to some better purpose than we have done heretofore. I ask you again, will you try to help me? It is not going to be an easy thing at first; but if each will try, for the sake of the other, I believe we can yet attain comparative content, if not positive happiness."
"Content! happiness!"
The words were hissed out with a fierceness of passion that startled him, and caused him to regard her anxiously.
"Happiness!" she repeated. "Ha! ha! What mockery in the sound of that word from your lips, after what has occurred to-day!"
"I know that you have cause to be both grieved and angry, Anna," said Gerald Goddard, humbly; "but let us both put the past behind us—let us wipe out all old scores, and from this day begin a new life."
"'Begin a new life' upon a heap of ashes, without one spark among them to ignite the smallest flame!" was the mocking rejoinder. Then, with a burst of agony, she continued: "Oh, God! if you had taken a dagger and stabbed me to death in that room to-day, you could not have slain me more effectually than by the words you have uttered. Begin a new life with you, after your confessions, your pleadings and protestations to Isabel Stewart? Heaven! Never! I hate you! hate you; hate you! with all the strength of my Italian blood, and warn you—beware! And now, begone!"
The woman looked like a maniac as she poured this wild torrent upon him, and the man saw that she was in no mood to be reasoned with or to consider any subject; that it would be wiser to wait until the fierceness of her anger had spent itself.
He had broached the matter of their future relations, thus giving her something to think of, and now he would leave her to meditate upon it by herself; perhaps, in a few days, she would be in a more reasonable frame of mind, and look at the subject from a different point of view.