“I will open his eyes. I will tell him you do not care a rap for him.”
“You will tell him that? Very well. I will swear to him that I do. Whom will he believe? Not you!”
Her words, her manner, were exasperating, and they were intended to be exasperating. That cool and systematic self-control which characterized Jerome, had more than aroused a feeling of rebellious protest in the girl’s impetuous nature. If she could break him up a little—
“I say you shall not marry him!” The words were not loudly spoken, but they were the utterances of a man much in earnest. “Rather than see you his wife I would gladly see you dead!”
“Oh, no doubt! But let me tell you, sir, I do not propose to die to please you! I propose to please myself by becoming the wife of Rube Rutland!”
This was too much, even for Jerome.
“You heartless, cruel, wicked woman!”
With a single stride he reached her side; he shook his finger rudely in her face; nay, in a frenzy of mad passion he did worse than that—he took hold of the wayward creature herself and shook her with such violence that those heavy coils of hair, upon which she had expended so much time and pains, loosened and fell about her in a reckless loveliness beyond the reach of art.
“Woman, do you know what you are doing? Do you know that you are playing with dangerous implements? toying with men’s passions? dallying with men’s souls?”
It is safe to say, Mell had never had such a shaking up, however frequent the occasions when she had deserved it.