"Are you mad?" he said again; and threatened me with his hand.
But she came a step nearer to me, and peered at me; and after one look took the lamp from the table and held it to my face. "At Ware?" she said. "At Ware?" And then, putting the lamp back on the table, she fell to laughing. "He is right!" she said. "I know him now. But you told me that his name was Taylor."
"Taylor?" he said wrathfully. "So it is; and Price, and half a dozen other names, for all I know. What does it matter what his name is?"
"Oh, it matters very much," she said, affecting to ogle me in an exaggerated fashion. "He is an old flame of mine. His face always brought something to my mind--but I thought that it was his likeness to the Duke."
He cursed her old flames, and the Duke. And then, "What does it mean?" he said. "Who is he?"
"He is the lad we left at Ware--in the old woman's room," she answered, her voice sinking, and growing almost soft. "Lord! it seems so long ago, it might have happened in another life! You remember him. Matt? You saw him with me at The Rose one night? The first night I saw you?"
He looked at me, long and strangely. "And what does it mean?" he said at last, scowling between wonder and suspicion.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Sais pas!" she answered. "Ask him!"
"You ruined me once!" I cried. "And he saved me! And now you would have me ruin him. You are devils, you are! Devils! But I defy you!"
He did not answer, but continued to stare at me; as if he discerned or suspected that there was more in this than appeared on the surface. At length the woman laughed, and he turned to her, rage in his face. "I see nothing to laugh at," he said.