Hayward grew suddenly cold with passion.
"I have every right—more right than that contemptible Lodge has to put his arm around you in the dance!"
"He at least has my permission," Helen replied spiritedly. But she would not have provoked him perhaps if she had known of the fever rising in his blood for all these months.
"Your permission, has he! And I am to beg for rights that are mine—and be refused!" His voice rose in anger with the roar and rush of the new-coming storm.
"You are mine!" he screamed. "I forbid you to meet him again! No man shall take you from me! I love you—I love you—-and I will kill any man who tries to rob me of you! Helen, Helen, tell me you are mine—mine now! Not that you will be mine when I win my commission, but that you are already mine—mine now!"
Helen turned away from him, terrified by his violence of speech. The man's every passion went wild as he read refusal in her movement. Only for a moment does she look away, however. In that instant she sees again the dead coachman, prone and ghastly as before, but with the end of that blazing wire lying against the back of his head, from which rises the vapour of burning flesh. Sickened with horror she turns to Hayward and reaches out her hand for his support. He clutches her passionately. His blood rushes to his heart in a flood—and then stands still.
"This is surrender," he thinks,—and his veins are aflame.
Helen is quiescent in his arms for a short space and suffers his caresses. Suddenly startled, she looks at his face. In a flash of light she sees it—distorted! With a shriek of terror she wildly tries to push him from her: but the demon of the blood of Guinea Gumbo is pitiless, and against the fury of it, as of the storm, she fights and cries—in vain.
CHAPTER XXIX
With his editorial duties and with the plans of his campaign for Mr. Killam's seat in the Senate, Evans Rutledge was as busy a man as Washington knew. However, he dropped his work long enough to attend upon Lola DeVale's marriage. He was no little surprised when Oliver Hazard asked him to stand by at his wedding. He was on friendly terms with the bride—and with Hazard, too, for that matter; but he did not know the strength and sincerity of Lola DeVale's friendship for him.