"He cannot!"
The words came from behind Sir Tom, who forthwith sprang a yard from the settle, and stood gaping; while Hawkesworth, his glass going to shivers on the floor, clutched the table as he rose. Both stood staring, both stood amazed, and scarce believed their eyes, when Sophia, stepping from the shelter of the settle, stood before them.
"He cannot!" she repeated, with a gesture, a look, an accent that should have withered the man. "He cannot! For he does not know what a gentleman feels about anything. He does not know what a gentleman is. Look at him! Look at him!" she continued, her face white with scorn; and she fixed the astonished Irishman with an outstretched finger that could scarce have confounded him more had it been a loaded pistol set to his head. "A gentleman!" she went on passionately. "That a gentleman? Why, the air he breathes pollutes us! To be in one room with him disgraces us! That such an one should have tricked us will shame us all our lives!"
Hawkesworth tried to speak, tried to carry off the surprise; but a feeble smile was all he could compass. Even Irish wit, even native impudence were unequal to this emergency. The blow was so sudden, so unexpected, he could not in a moment arrange his thoughts, or discern his position. He saw that for some reason or other she had come to him before the time; but he could not on the instant remember how far he had disclosed his hand before her, or what she had learned from him while she lay hidden.
Naturally Tom was the quicker to recover himself. His first thought on seeing his sister was that she had got wind of his plans, and was here to prevent his marriage. And it was in this sense that he interpreted her opening words. But before she had ceased to speak, the passion which she threw into her denunciation of Hawkesworth, turned his thoughts into a new and a fiercer channel. With an oath, "Never mind him!" he cried, and stepping forward gripped her, almost brutally, by the wrist. "I'll talk with him afterwards. First, miss, what the devil are you doing here?"
"Ask him," she answered; and again pointed her finger at Hawkesworth. "Or no, I will tell you, Tom. That man, the man who calls himself your friend, and called himself my lover, has plotted to ruin us. He has schemed to get us into his net. To-morrow he would have married you to--to, I know not, whom. And when he had seen you married, and knew you had forfeited a fortune to me, then--then I should have been a fit match for him! I! I! And in the evening he would have married me! Oh, shame, shame on us, Tom, that we should have let ourselves be so deluded!"
"He would have married you!" Tom cried, dropping her hand in sheer astonishment.
"The same day!"
"Hawkesworth? This man here? He would have married you?"
"You may well say, he!" she answered, a wave of crimson flooding her cheeks and throat. "The thought kills me."