She stood as one stunned; dazed by his treatment of her; shaken to the soul by his relentless, pitiless tone, by his thinly veiled hatred.
He who had before been cold, precise and just was become inhuman, implacable, a stone. Presently, “Three minutes are gone,” he said.
“And if I tell you?” she answered in a voice which, though low, vibrated with resentment and indignation, “if I tell you what you wish to know, what then?”
“I shall save the child—I trust. Certainly I shall save him from further suffering.”
“And what of me?”
“You will escape for this time.”
Her breast heaved with the passion she restrained. Her foot tapped the floor. Her fingers drummed on the table. Such treatment was not fit treatment for a dog, much less for a woman, a gentlewoman! And his injustice! How dared he! How dared he! What had she done to deserve it? Nothing! No, nothing to deserve this.
Meanwhile he seemed to have eyes only for his watch, laid open on the table before him. But he noted the signs, and he fancied that she was about to break down, that she was yielding, that in a moment she would fall to weeping, perhaps would fall on her knees—and tell him all. A faint surprise, therefore, pierced his pitiless composure when, after the lapse of a long minute, she spoke in a tone that was comparatively calm and decided.
“You have forgotten,” she said slowly, “that I am of your blood! That I was to be your wife!”
“It was you who forgot that!” he replied.