“Give up Mrs. Haldane!” repeated the girl. “I ask nothing more than that. I will not force you to marry me, Charles, till it is for your good; indeed, if I did, I know that we should be unhappy, and that you would never forgive me. But you can at least cease to be so familiar with Mrs. Haldane.”
He had discovered by this time, I suppose, that the pleading mood availed him little; at all events, he suddenly changed his tone, and with a cry of angry indignation, he exclaimed—
“Edith, take care! I have told you that I will not suffer it! How dare you suspect that lady! How dare you!”
And he stood towering over her (the satyr!) in the fulness of his snowy shirtfront and the whiteness of his moral indignation.
“It is no use being angry,” she returned, with a certain stubbornness, though I could see that she was cowed, in the manner of gentle women, by his violent physical passion. “After what you have told me, after what I have seen——”
“Edith, again, take care!”
“You are always with her,” she continued, “night-time and day-time. I am amazed that Mr. Haldane does not notice it. It is the talk of the place.”
With another exclamation, he turned his back and walked rapidly away.
“Come back!” she cried hysterically. “If you leave like that, I will drown myself in the river.”
He returned and faced her.