'Where is he?' she said imperiously.' Ah!—I see—I see!'
She sat down, fronting him, and panting a little.
'Miss Foster is not with me. Mr. Manisty is not with you. The inference is easy.—And you planned it! You took—you dared to take—as much as this—into your own hands!'
He made no reply. He bent like a reed in the storm.
'There is no boldness like a saint's'—she said bitterly,—'no hardness—like an angel's! What I would not have ventured to do with my closest friend, my nearest and dearest—you—a stranger—have done—with a light heart. Oh! it is monstrous!—monstrous!'
She moved her neck from side to side as though she was suffocating—throwing back the light ruffle that encircled it.
'A stranger?'—he said slowly. His intense yet gentle gaze confronted hers.
'You refer, I suppose, to that most sacred, most intimate confidence I made to you?—which no man of honour or of heart could have possibly betrayed,'—she said passionately. 'Ah! you did well to warn me that it was no true confession—under no true seal! You should have warned me further—more effectually.'
Her paleness was all gone. Her cheeks flamed. The priest felt that she was beside herself, and, traversed as his own mind was with the most poignant doubts and misgivings, he must needs wrestle with her, defend himself.
'Madame!—you do me some wrong,' he said hurriedly. 'At least in words I have told nothing—betrayed nothing. When I left him an hour ago Mr. Manisty had no conception that you were here. After my first letter to him, he tells me that he relinquished the idea of coming to Torre Amiata, since if you had been staying here, I must have mentioned it.'