“You dog!” she panted, and writhing harder, wrenched free a hand and arm. Blindly she beat upwards into that evil satyr's face. “You beast! You toad! You coward!”
They fell apart, each panting; she leaning faint against the spinet, her bosom galloping; he muttering oaths decent and other--for in the upward thrusting of her little hand one of its fingers had prodded at an eye, and the pain of it--which had caused him to relax his hold of her--stripped what little veneer remained upon the man's true nature.
“Will you go?” she asked him furiously, outraged by the vileness of his ravings. “Will you go, or must I summon help?”
He stood looking at her, straightening his wig, which had become disarranged in the struggle, and forcing himself to an outward calm. “So,” he said. “You scorn me? You will not marry me? You realise the chance, eh? And why? Why?”
“I suppose it is because I am blind to the honor of the alliance,” she controlled herself to answer him. “Will you go?”
He did not move. “Yet you loved me once--”
“'Tis a lie!” she blazed. “I thought I did--to my undying shame. No more than that, my lord--as I've a soul to be saved.”
“You loved Me,” he insisted. “And you would love me still but for this damned Caryll--this French coxcomb, who has crawled into your regard like the slimy, creeping thing he is.”
“It sorts well with your ways, my lord, that you could say these things behind his back. You are practiced at stabbing men behind.”
The gibe, with all the hurtful, stinging quality that only truth possesses, struck his anger from him, leaving him limp and pale. Then he recovered.
“Do you know who he is--what he is?” he asked. “I will tell you. He's a spy--a damned Jacobite spy, whom a word from me will hang.”
Her eyes lashed him with her scorn. “I were a fool did I believe you,” was her contemptuous answer.
“Ask him,” he said, and laughed. He turned and strode to the door. Paused there, sardonic, looking back. “I shall be quits with you, ma'am. Quits! I'll hang this pretty turtle of yours at Tyburn. Tell him so from me.”
He wrenched the door open, and went out on that, leaving her cold and sick with dread.
Was it but an idle threat to terrorize her? Was it but that? Her impulse was to seek Mr. Caryll upon the instant that she might ask him and allay her fears. But what right had she? Upon what grounds could she set a question upon so secret a matter? She conceived him raising his brows in that supercilious way of his, and looking her over from head to toe as though seeking a clue to the nature of this quaint thing that asked him questions. She pictured his smile and the jest with which he would set aside her inquiry. She imagined, indeed, just what she believed would happen did she ask him; which was precisely what would not have happened. Imagining thus, she held her peace, and nursed her secret dread. And on the following day, his weakness so far overcome as to leave him no excuse to linger at Stretton House, Mr. Caryll took his departure and returned to his lodging in Old Palace Yard.