“Thank you! You saw her take up a deadly weapon, and if she has not murdered one of the three of us, we have to thank, not her, but the mercy of God. You did exactly the right thing, and the only thing, and actually she would have admired you for it had it not been that you came down to her door and prostrated yourself for her to trample over you.”
“Good heavens, Miss Stretton! were you inside that room?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I was or not. I know that she twisted you around her little finger, and took her revenge in the only way that was possible for her.”
“Ah, but you don’t know the depth of my degradation. She showed me her wrists, marked by the fingers of a savage, and that savage was myself.”
“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” cried Miss Stretton, laughing. “Do you think those marks indicate pain? Not a bit of it. Your grasp of her wrists did not injure her in the least, and, short of putting handcuffs on them, was the only method at your disposal to prevent her perhaps killing her father, a man worth a million such as she, and yet neither he nor you have the sense to see it. I can inform you that Miss Gertrude’s arm is sore to-night, but not where you clasped it. She hurt herself more than she injured me when she struck me. Look at this,”—and she drew back her sleeve, disclosing a wrist as pretty as that of Miss Hemster, notwithstanding the fact that one part was both bruised and swollen. “That is where I caught her blow, and can assure you it was given with great force and directness. So, Mr. Tremorne, if you have any sympathy to expend, please let me have the benefit of it, and I will bestow my sympathy upon you in return.”
“Indeed, Miss Stretton, I am very sorry to see that you are hurt. I hoped you had warded off the blow slantingly, instead of getting it square on the arm like that.”
“Oh, it is nothing,” said the girl carelessly, drawing down her sleeve again, “it is merely an exhibit, as they say in the courts, to win the sympathy of a man, and it doesn’t hurt now in the least, unless I strike it against something. I ask you to believe that I would never have said a word about the girl to you if you had not seen for yourself what those near her have to put up with. You will understand, Mr. Tremorne, I am but a poor benighted woman who has had no one to talk to for months and months. I cannot unburden my soul to Mr. Hemster, because I like him too well; and if I talk to the captain he will merely laugh at me, and tell funny stories. There is no one but you; so you see, unfortunate man, you are the victim of two women.”
“I like being the victim of one of them,” said I; “but am I to infer from what you have said that, as you don’t speak to Mr. Hemster because you like him, you speak to me because you dislike me?”
“What a far-fetched conclusion!” she laughed. “Certainly not. I like you very much indeed, and even admired you until you used the word ‘abjectly’ down in that passage. That is a word I detest; no one should employ it when referring to himself.”
“Then you were in Miss Hemster’s room after all.”