But she interrupted him. His very abjectness was in itself an eloquent admission of the worst.
“Heard? Have you not told me all? You did not know. You did not know that it was I whom you were carrying off. Do you think I cannot guess who is the master-villain that employs you for his jackal? And you did not know it was I—that it was one who loved you once, when you were clean and honest....”
“Nan! Nan! O God!”
“But I never loved you as I loathe you now for the foul thing you are become, you that were to conquer the world for me. You did not know that it was I whom you were paid to carry off! And you are so shameless, so lost to honour, that you dare to urge that ignorance as your excuse. Well, you know it now, and I hope you are punished in the knowledge. I hope that, if any lingering sense of shame abides in you, it will scorch your miserable soul to ashes. Get up, man,” she bade him, regally contemptuous, splendidly tragic. “Shall grovelling there mend any of your vileness?”
He came instantly to his feet. Yet it was not, as she supposed, in obedience to her command, so much as out of a sudden awakening to the need for instant action. All the agony that was threatening to burst his soul must be repressed, all that he had to say in expression and perhaps relieving of that agony, must wait.
“What I have done, I can undo,” he said, and, commanding himself under the stress of that urgent necessity, he assumed a sudden firmness. “Shall we stand talking here instead of acting, when every moment of delay increases your danger? Come! As I carried you hither, in defiance of all, so will I carry you hence again at once while yet there is time.”
She recoiled before the hand that he flung out as if to seize her and compel her. There was a sudden fury of anger in her eyes, a fury of scorn on her lips.
“You will carry me hence! You! I am to trust myself to you!”
He never winced under the lash of her contempt, so intent was he upon that one urgent thing.
“Will you stay, then, and trust yourself to Buckingham?” he flung fiercely back at her. “Come, I say,” he commanded, oddly masterful in his overwhelming concern for her.