“He did not! He knew. I believe him. I don’t believe you.”
“If he told you that I was any thing but a single woman—if he told you that Arnold Brinkworth was married to any body but Miss Lundie of Windygates—I say again he lied!”
“I say again—I believe him, and not you.”
“You believe I am Arnold Brinkworth’s wife?”
“I am certain of it.”
“You tell me that to my face?”
“I tell you to your face—you may have been Geoffrey Delamayn’s mistress; you are Arnold Brinkworth’s wife.”
At those words the long restrained anger leaped up in Anne—all the more hotly for having been hitherto so steadily controlled. In one breathless moment the whirlwind of her indignation swept away, not only all remembrance of the purpose which had brought her to Swanhaven, but all sense even of the unpardonable wrong which she had suffered at Geoffrey’s hands. If he had been there, at that moment, and had offered to redeem his pledge, she would have consented to marry him, while Mrs. Glenarm s eye was on her—no matter whether she destroyed herself in her first cool moment afterward or not. The small sting had planted itself at last in the great nature. The noblest woman is only a woman, after all!
“I forbid your marriage to Geoffrey Delamayn! I insist on his performing the promise he gave me, to make me his wife! I have got it here in his own words, in his own writing. On his soul, he swears it to me—he will redeem his pledge. His mistress, did you say? His wife, Mrs. Glenarm, before the week is out!”
In those wild words she cast back the taunt—with the letter held in triumph in her hand.