“No, no; don't tell her that. Take her away; I cannot look at her. Take her away; tell her anything but that.”
Clare gasped. She caught the arm which Agnes held out to her.
“Clare,” said Agnes, “you must nerve yourself for the worst. Mr. Westwood wishes to be released from his engagement to you. He has heard something; that is to say, he has come to the conclusion that--that he must leave this country without delay--in short, to-morrow he sets out for Africa once more.”
“That is not true!” cried Clare. “I can hear the false ring in your words. Claude--Claude, you do not mean”--
“Take her away--take her away! I cannot look at her. I see him--him in the room.”
The girl gave a start, and looked from the one to the other. She straightened herself and the expression on her face was one of defiance.
“Very well,” she said. “Yes, it is very well.”
She gave a long sigh, then a gasp. Her face became deathly white. She did not fall. Agnes had caught her in her arms.
|The blow had fallen. His punishment had come, and Agnes, lying on her bed that night, felt that she would have given everything that she possessed to avert it. If there had been any thought of revenge in her heart originally--and she felt that perhaps there had been some such thought the moment that Sir Percival Hope had told her what she should have seen for herself long before, namely, that Claude Westwood was in love with Clare--there was now nothing in her heart but pity for the girl whom she had left sleeping in the next room.
She felt that she had been amply revenged upon the man who had treated her so cruelly. She had crushed him with a completeness that would have satisfied even the most revengeful of women. She had seen him flying from the house without waiting for the girl to recover consciousness. What finer scheme of vengeance could any woman hope for--and she had always heard that women were revengeful--than that which had been placed within her reach?
And yet she lay awake in her tears, feeling that she would give up all she had in the world if by so doing, she could compass the happiness of the man who had treated her so basely, and of the girl who had supplanted her in his love. She felt that revenge was not sweet but bitter.