第60章 CHAPTER XV LOVE AND RAGE(2)

He frowned. "Too readily!" he cried. "Too readily for sincerity. I will not take it so.""Indeed, my lord, for a penitent, you are very difficult to please. I pardon you with all my heart.""You are sincere?" he cried, and sought to take her hands; but she whipped them away and behind her. "You bear me no ill-will?"She considered him now with a calm, critical gaze, before which he was forced to lower his bold eyes. "Why should Ibear you an ill-will?" she asked him.

"For the thing I did - the thing I sought to do.""I wonder do you know all that you did?" she asked him, musingly. "Shall I tell you, my lord? You cured me of a folly. I had been blind, and you made me see. I had foolishly thought to escape one evil, and you made me realize that I was rushing into a worse. You saved me from myself.

You may have made me suffer then; but it was a healing hurt you dealt me. And should I bear you an ill-will for that ?"He had risen from his knee. He stood apart, pondering her from under bent brows with eyes that were full of angry fire.

"I do not think," she ended, "that there needs more between us. I have understood you, sir, since that a day at Maidstone - I think we were strangers until then; and perhaps now you may begin to understand me. Fare you well, my lord."She made shift to go, but he barred her passage now in earnest, his hands clenched beside him in witness of the violence he did himself to keep them there. "Not yet," he said, in a deep, concentrated voice. "Not yet. I did you a wrong, I know. And what you say - cruel as it is - is no more than I deserve. But I desire to make amends. I love you, Hortensia, and desire to make amends."She smiled wistfully. "'Tis overlate to talk of that.""Why?" he demanded fiercely, and caught her arms, holding her there before him. "Why is it overlate?""Suffer me to go," she commanded, rather than begged, and made to free herself of his grasp.

"I want you to be my wife, Hortensia - my wedded wife."She looked at him, and laughed; a cold laugh, disdainful, yet not bitter. "You wanted that before, my lord; yet you neglected the opportunity my folly gave you. I thank you -you, after God - for that same neglect."

"Ah, do not say that!" he begged, a very suppliant again. "Do not say that! Child, I love you. Do you understand?""Who could fail to understand, after the abundant proof you have afforded me of your sincerity and your devotion?""Do you rally me?" he demanded, letting through a flash of the anger that was mounting in him. "Am I so poor a thing that you whet your little wit upon me?""My lord, you are paining me. What can you look to gain by this? Suffer me to go."A moment yet he stood, holding her wrists and looking down into her eyes with a mixture of pleading and ferocity in his.

Then he made a sound in his throat, and caught her bodily to him; his arms, laced about her, held her bound and crushed against him. His dark, flushed face hovered above her own.

Fear took her at last. It mounted and grew to horror. "Let me go, my lord," she besought him, her voice trembling. "Oh, let me go!""I love you, Hortensia! I need you!" he cried, as if wrung by pain, and then hot upon her brow and cheeks and lips his kisses fell, and shame turned her to fire from head to foot as she fought helplessly within his crushing grasp.

"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 Ibelieve 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.