“I will do anything for you—anything!” he would have promised her had not the threat of the stranger so like unto himself interrupted.
“Don’t mock my patience, Lydia,” Hastings heard as once more he shifted his eyes to the speaker.
It was maddening how from one to the other of them his sympathies veered. The sepulchral voice of the man seemed to express Hastings’ own thoughts; yet her sweet appeal awoke resentful fury for what words he dared say to her. If only Hastings might explain, when she stared so reproachfully, that it was only he who had spoken!
Momentarily at a loss, she put the candle down on a little shelf. She rubbed her hands one about the other as if her doing so might lessen the affront which she had now somehow to meet. When at last she spoke, her calm, even tones were like the loveliness of primroses; her eyes were brimming with simple trustfulness.
“You own me, O my husband,” she said, “heart—heart, body, and soul. Do with me what you will.”
Why should she be so abject? But when Hastings heard the voice of that other, he was again awed by it.
“Think not that I haven’t avenged myself!” the voice sneeringly proclaimed.
Hastings looked. For the first time he noticed that the stranger’s arm was in a sling; there was a mole on the cheek near the corner of those tightly compressed lips.
She shook like a leaf in a gale. For dread minutes she faced Hastings tremblingly. Coming nearer to him she murmured:
“Are you badly hurt, my—my husband?”