“No; but it is so awful. Tom”—calling him so as unconsciously as he had called her Beatrice—“must Monica know this? Oh! it was cruel enough before—but this——”
“She shall never know,” said Tom quickly. “To what end should we add this burden to what she carries now? No one could prove it—it may be nothing more than some sick fancy, engendered by the thought of what might have been. Mind you, I have no moral doubts myself; but the man is practically mad, and no confession or evidence given by him would be accepted. He has fulfilled his vow—he has murdered—practically murdered his foe; but Monica must be spared the knowledge: she must never know.”
“No, never! never!” cried Beatrice; and her voice expressed so much feeling, that Tom turned and looked at her in the fading light.
“Have you a heart after all, Beatrice?” he asked.
She made no answer; her heart beat wildly, answering in its own fashion the question asked, but not in a way that he could hear.
“Beatrice,” rather fiercely, “why did you not marry the marquis?”
“You flirted with him disgracefully, then.”
She looked up with something of pleading in her dark eyes.
She looked up again, her eyes flashing strangely.
“What right have you to ask such a question?”
“The right of the man who loves you,” he answered, in the same half-fierce, half-bitter way—“who loves you with every fibre of his being; and although he has proved you vain and frivolous and heartless once and again, cannot tear your image from his heart. Do not think I am complaining. I suppose you have a right to please yourself; but sometimes I feel as if no man had ever been treated so abominably as I have been by you.”
“You by me!” she answered, panting in her excitement, “when it was you who left me in a fury, without one word of farewell.”
“I thought I had had my _congé_ pretty distinctly.”
“You had had nothing of the kind—nothing but a few wild confused words from a mere child, frightened and bewildered by happiness and nervousness into the silliest of speeches a silly girl could make at such a moment. But you cannot understand—you never will—you are made of stone, I think.”
“I wish I were, sometimes,” he said; “I wish it when I am near you. You make me love you—I am powerless in your hands, and you—you——”