"As you will about that," he returned, gently, "but at least you must allow me to guide you in some things. You must yield especially in one. No more poker for my affianced wife. And you are that, my darling; let the story be told or remain a secret between us as you will, you are my affianced wife."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
Carlita was trembling so that neither affirmation nor protest was possible.
She would have run away, perhaps, and have hidden herself for very shame, but that the ability was denied her. She stared at him helplessly, hopelessly, a wild insane longing to tell him everything taking possession of her; but she shrank from the desire even more than from the lie she was enacting. She hated herself for wishing to be false to her oath, more than for the despicable treachery of her conduct.
It was a curious sensation, and intensified as she found herself thinking how handsome he was, how magnificent in his princely bearing, his grave face lighted with a smile, so tender, so wistful, as to transform his masculine beauty almost to pleading.
She suddenly forgot that he was a murderer, after having that thought uppermost in her mind for weeks, forgot that his hands had taken a life in the most cowardly way that life ever had been taken, and of her own accord she put out her icy fingers and allowed him to clasp them in his warm throbbing palm.
Jessica, through the door-way of the conservatory, saw her, and an expression of fiendish malice left her lips, so illy suppressed as to almost betray her presence there; but both Carlita and Pierrepont were too absorbed to hear.
Leith did not draw her to him—he was too much a gentleman to offer an unwelcome caress—but pressed the little cold hand tenderly.