“Even if—? You mean to say if she were—fond of me—”
Mrs. Trevanion uttered a low cry. “Edmund, I will rather go and tell her, what I have told you—that you could never understand each other—that you are different, wholly different—that nothing of the kind could be—”
He glared at her with a fierce rage, by which she was no longer frightened, which she had seen before, but which produced in her overwrought mind a flutter of the old, sickening misery which had fallen into so hopeless a calm. “That is what you will do for me—when affairs come to an issue!—that is all after everything you have promised, everything you have said—that is all; but I might have known—”
She made no reply. She was so subdued in her nature by all the hopeless struggles of the past that she did not say a word in self-defence.
“Then,” he said, rising up from his chair, throwing out his hands as though putting her out of her place, “go! That’s the only other thing you can do for me. Get out of this. Why stay till they come and drag you out to the light and expose you—and me? If you won’t do the one thing for me, do the other, and make no more mischief, for the love of heaven—if you care for heaven or for love either,” he added, making a stride towards the table and seizing his hat again. He did not, however, rush away then, as seemed his first intention, but stood for a moment irresolute, not looking at her, holding his hat in his hand.
“Edmund,” she said, “you are always sorry afterwards when you say such things to me.”
“No,” he said, “I’m not sorry—don’t flatter yourself— I mean every word I say. You’ve been my worst enemy all my life. And since you’ve been with me it’s been worst of all. You’ve made me your slave; you’ve pretended to make a gentleman of me, and you’ve made me a slave. I have never had my own way or my fling, but had to drag about with you. And now, when you really could do me good—when you could help me to marry the girl I like, and reform, and everything, you won’t. You tell me point-blank you won’t. You say you’ll rather ruin me than help me. Do you call that the sort of a thing a man has a right to expect—after all I have suffered in the past?”
“Edmund, I have always told you that Miss Trevanion—”
“Rosalind!” he said. “Whatever you choose to call her, I shall call her by her name. I have been everything with them till now, when this friend of yours, this Uncle John, has come. And you can put it all right with him, if you please, in a moment, and make my way clear. And now you say you won’t! Oh, yes, I know you well enough. Let all those little things go crazy and everybody be put out, rather than lend a real helping hand to me—”
“Edmund!” she called to him, holding out her hands as he rushed to the door; but he felt he had got a little advantage and would not risk the loss of it again. He turned round for a moment and addressed her with a sort of solemnity.