I leaped from my chair at these words, and looked fiercely at Forrester. He was perfectly calm, and continued to speak in a voice of freezing quietness.
"Pray, resume your seat. It is sheer waste of time to lose your temper with me. Either I must speak candidly to you, or there is an end to our intercourse."
"Yes—candidly, but not insultingly," I replied, seizing my chair, and, after giving it a very ill-tempered fling upon the ground, throwing myself into it.
"How foolish it is in you to exhibit this humor to me," he resumed after a short pause. "I imagine I have a right to speak to you exactly what I think, and that the interest I have taken in your concerns ought to protect me from the suspicion of desiring to insult you. Were it my cue to insult you, it is not in this affair I should look for the grounds of quarrel. But let that pass. I have seen the man whom you have made your mortal enemy, and have endeavored to prevail upon him to break the marriage. I have failed."
"Failed? How? Why? What does he say? He is a fiend!"
"Strange that he should have just the same opinion of you. Beelzebub is rather a respectable and virtuous person in his estimation compared with you. Just possible both may be right!"
I never saw Forrester in this sort of vein before. It was as if he were determined to lacerate my feelings and lay them bare; and yet there was a certain eccentric kindness under this rough treatment, which helped to reconcile me to it. At all events, I was bound to endure it; I knew that if I outraged him by any show of distrust or violence, his lips would be closed forever. I felt, too, that I had given him some provocation in the first instance by the temper I had betrayed; and that the fault was at least as much mine as his.
"Well," I cried, "you must forgive me, Forrester, if I am a little chafed and galled, and, as you say, soured. Circumstances have pressed hardly upon me. Remember how long I have been shut out from communication with society—and the state of anxiety and suspense in which I have lived. You must make allowances for me."
"Exactly. I must make allowances for you. But when I ask you to make allowances for him, who has gone through sufferings a hundred-fold more acute, which you have inflicted upon him, what kind of response do I receive? No matter. I do make allowances for you. If you are not entirely absorbed by selfish considerations, you
will endeavor to comprehend the wrong you have committed, and do what you can to avoid making it worse."