‘Well, Professor Gilroy – or is it Mr. Gilroy?’ said she, with that bitter smile of hers. ‘How is your friend Mr. Charles Sadler after the ball?’
‘You fiend!’ I cried. ‘You have come to the end of your tricks now. I will have no more of them. Listen to what I say.’ I strode across and shook her roughly by the shoulder ‘As sure as there is a God in heaven, I swear that if you try another of your deviltries upon me I will have your life for it. Come what may, I will have your life. I have come to the end of what a man can endure.’
‘Accounts are not quite settled between us,’ said she, with a passion that equaled my own. ‘I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other. It will take a little more to break your spirit, I see, but broken it shall be. Miss Marden comes back to-morrow, as I understand.’
‘What has that to do with you?’ I cried. ‘It is a pollution that you should dare even to think of her. If I thought that you would harm her – ‘
She was frightened, I could see, though she tried to brazen it out. She read the black thought in my mind, and cowered away from me.
‘She is fortunate in having such a champion,’ said she. ‘He actually dares to threaten a lonely woman. I must really congratulate Miss Marden upon her protector.’
The words were bitter, but the voice and manner were more acid still.
‘There is no use talking,’ said I. ‘I only came here to tell you, – and to tell you most solemnly, – that your next outrage upon me will be your last.’ With that, as I heard Wilson’s step upon the stair, I walked from the room. Ay, she may look venomous and deadly, but, for all that, she is beginning to see now that she has as much to fear from me as I can have from her. Murder! It has an ugly sound. But you don’t talk of murdering a snake or of murdering a tiger. Let her have a care now.
May 5. I met Agatha and her mother at the station at eleven o’clock. She is looking so bright, so happy, so beautiful. And she was so overjoyed to see me. What have I done to deserve such love? I went back home with them, and we lunched together. All the troubles seem in a moment to have been shredded back from my life. She tells me that I am looking pale and worried and ill. The dear child puts it down to my loneliness and the perfunctory attentions of a housekeeper. I pray that she may never know the truth! May the shadow, if shadow there must be, lie ever black across my life and leave hers in the sunshine. I have just come back from them, feeling a new man. With her by my side I think that I could show a bold face to any thing which life might send.
