"You do right to expose me," she replied, with bitterness: "some friends would have only judged from what I said, that I chose to give no particular explanation of a circumstance which calls for none—at least to a stranger. You have judged better, and have made me feel, not only the meanness of duplicity, but my own inadequacy to sustain the task of a dissembler. I now tell you distinctly, that that glove is not the fellow, as you have acutely discerned, to the one which I just now produced;—it belongs to a friend yet dearer to me than the original of Vandyke's picture—a friend by whose counsels I have been, and will be, guided—whom I honour—whom I"—she paused.
I was irritated at her manner, and filled up the blank in my own way— "Whom she loves, Miss Vernon would say."
"And if I do say so," she replied haughtily, "by whom shall my affection be called to account?"
"Not by me, Miss Vernon, assuredly—I entreat you to hold me acquitted of such presumption.—But," I continued, with some emphasis, for I was now piqued in return, "I hope Miss Vernon will pardon a friend, from whom she seems disposed to withdraw the title, for observing"—
"Observe nothing, sir," she interrupted with some vehemence, except that I will neither be doubted nor questioned. There does not exist one by whom I will be either interrogated or judged; and if you sought this unusual time of presenting yourself in order to spy upon my privacy, the friendship or interest with which you pretend to regard me, is a poor excuse for your uncivil curiosity."
"I relieve you of my presence," said I, with pride equal to her own; for my temper has ever been a stranger to stooping, even in cases where my feelings were most deeply interested—"I relieve you of my presence. I awake from a pleasant, but a most delusive dream; and—but we understand each other."
I had reached the door of the apartment, when Miss Vernon, whose movements were sometimes so rapid as to seem almost instinctive, overtook me, and, catching hold of my arm, stopped me with that air of authority which she could so whimsically assume, and which, from the naivete and simplicity of her manner, had an effect so peculiarly interesting.
"Stop, Mr. Frank," she said, "you are not to leave me in that way neither; I am not so amply provided with friends, that I can afford to throw away even the ungrateful and the selfish. Mark what I say, Mr. Francis Osbaldistone. You shall know nothing of this mysterious glove," and she held it up as she spoke—"nothing—no, not a single iota more than you know already; and yet I will not permit it to be a gauntlet of strife and defiance betwixt us. My time here," she said, sinking into a tone somewhat softer, "must necessarily be very short; yours must be still shorter: we are soon to part never to meet again; do not let us quarrel, or make any mysterious miseries the pretext for farther embittering the few hours we shall ever pass together on this side of eternity."