I started, as if to leave her, with a look of fell defiance, roused, ready to burst forth into utterance, upon my own face. But she gently detained my arm.
“You are troubled.”
“No.”
“Ah! but you are. Stop awhile. You will feel better.”
“Thank you; but I feel very well.”
“No, no, you do not. You can not deceive me. I know where the shoe pinches; but what did you expect? Were you simple enough to imagine that a woman would be true to her husband, who was false to her own mother?”
“Fiend!” I muttered in her ear.
“Ha! ha! ha!” was the unmeasured response of the bel dame, loud enough for the whole house to hear. I darted from her grasp, which would have detained me still, made my way—how I know not—out of the house, and found myself almost gasping for breath, in the open air of the street.
She, at least, had been sagacious enough to find out my secret