"I'm afraid," said Edith, in a tone of quiet contempt, "that the security is of too little value."
Leon looked at her with fury in his eyes.
"You are driving me to the most desperate measures," he cried.
"It seems to me that your measures have all along been as desperate as they well can be."
"I swear by all that's holy," thundered Leon, "that I'll tame you yet. I'll bring you into subjection."
"Ah! then in that case," said Edith, "my comfort will be that the subjection can not last long."
"No, it will not, as you very well know," said Edith, in cold, measured tones, looking steadfastly at him with what seemed like a certain solemn warning. She rose as she said this, still looking at Leon, while he also rose in a state of vehement excitement.
"What do you meant" he cried. "You look as blood-thirsty as an assassin."
"I may yet become one," said Edith, gloomily, "if this lasts much longer. You have eyes, but you will not see. You treat me like some silly, timid child, while I have all the time the spirit of a man. This can only end in one way. Some one must die!"
Leon looked at her in astonishment. Her voice and her look showed that she was in earnest, but the fragile beauty of her slender form seemed to belie the dark meaning of her words.
"I came with a fair offer," said he, in a voice hoarse with passion.
"You!" said Edith, in cold scorn; "you with a fair offer! Fairness and honor and justice and truth, and all such things, are altogether unknown to such as you."
At this Leon frowned that peculiar frown of his, and gnawed his mustache in his rage.
"I have spared you thus far," said he--"I have spared you; but now, by Heaven, you shall feel what it is to have a master!"
"You!" she cried--"you spared me? If I have escaped any injury from you, it has been through my own courage and the cowardice of your own heart. You my master! You will learn a terrible lesson before you become that!"
"I have spared you," cried Leon, now beside himself with rage--"I have spared you, but I will spare you no longer. After this you shall know that what I have thus far done is as nothing to that which is yet before you."
"What you have done!" said Edith, fixing her great wrathful eyes more sternly upon Leon, with a look of deadly menace, and with burning intensity of gaze, and speaking in a low tone that was tremulous with repressed indignation--"what you have done! Let me tell you, Captain Dudleigh, your heart's blood could never atone for the wrongs you have done me! Beware, Sir, how you drive me to desperation. You little know what I have in my mind to do. You have made me too familiar with the thought of death!"