“It is a lie, and you know it. Colonel Clutterbuck is not your husband, and the child has not left America. Where is he?”
“As you know so much, probably you know the rest. It is therefore useless for me to speak.” Her tone and her manner were most aggravating, and in Lord Francis Onslow’s then mood were positively dangerous. After the semi-somnolent, semi-stupid phase through which he had passed, an excitement had set in over which he had but little control.
He turned savagely on Mme. de Vigny, and seized her by the throat with his long, thin fingers, and yet she was the woman before whom he had once knelt in adoration.
“My boy—where is my boy? Tell me, where is Ronny?”
How could she tell him while he held her in a vise, even if she wished to do so. She tried vainly to utter some sound, possibly a scream, but nothing was heard save a gurgle, while her features became livid. The look of her to a degree sobered him, and he relaxed his grip; that is, he almost threw her from him with a force that caused her to fall with her head against the sharp edge of a sofa.
Even then he took no notice of her; it did not seem to trouble him that she was hurt, or that the handkerchief she held to her head was covered with blood.
He did not, however, attempt to touch her again, but walked up and down the room talking rapidly:
“Curse of my life that you have been, give me my child, that I may take him to the wronged Fenella and forget that you ever existed. If it had not been for you, what a happy man I might have been with Fenella—my beautiful Fenella.”
“And De Mürger?” asked Lucille, whose sting even fright and injury had not wholly killed.
“De Mürger—curse him too—but I forgot, he is dead—Fenella killed him to save her honor, even as I will kill you, if you do not take me where I shall find Ronny.”