Part 18 (1/2)
”From treachery and desertion.”
”Anna!”
A bitter sneer curled the beautiful woman's lips.
”You know how to do it very well, Gerald,” she tauntingly returned.
”That air of injured innocence is vastly becoming to you, and would be very effective, if I did not know you so well; but it has disarmed me for the last time. Pray never a.s.sume it again, for you will never blind me by it in the future.”
”Explain yourself, Anna. I fail to understand you.”
”Very well; I will do so in a very few words; I was a witness of your interview with the girl just after dinner to-night.”
”You?” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man, flus.h.i.+ng hotly, and looking considerably crestfallen. ”Well, what of it?” he added, defiantly, the next moment.
”What of it, indeed? Do you imagine a wife is going to stand quietly by and see her husband make love to her companion?”
”What nonsense you are talking, Anna! I went in search of one of the housemaids to b.u.t.ton my gloves for me, met Miss Allen instead, and she was kind enough to oblige me.”
”Bah! Gerald, I was too near you at the time to swallow such a very lame vindication,” vulgarly sneered his wife. ”You were making love to her, I tell you--you were telling her something which you had no business to reveal, and I swore then that her fate should be sealed this very night.”
Gerald G.o.ddard realized that there was no use arguing with his wife in that mood, while he also felt that his case was rather weak, and so he s.h.i.+fted his ground.
”But you must have plotted this thing long ago, for your play was written, and your characters chosen before we left the city,” he remarked.
”Well?”
”But you said you had two reasons; what was the other?”
”Emil's love for the girl. He became infatuated with her from the moment of his coming to us, as you must have noticed.”
”Yes.”
”Well, he tried to win her--he even asked her to marry him, but she refused him. Think of it--that little n.o.body rejecting a man like Emil, with his wealth and position!”
”Well, if she did not love him, she had a right to refuse, him.”
”Oh, of course,” sneered madam, irritably. ”But you know what he is when he once gets his heart set upon anything, and her obstinacy only made him the more determined to carry his point. He appealed to me to help him; and, as I have never refused him anything he wanted, if I could possibly give it to him--”
”But this was such a wicked--such a heartless, cowardly thing to do!”
interposed Mr. G.o.ddard, with a gesture of horror.
”I know it,” madam retorted, with a defiant toss of her head; ”but you may thank yourself for it, after all; for, almost at the last moment, I repented--I was on the point of giving the whole thing up and letting the play go on without any change of characters, when your faithlessness turned me into a demon, and doomed the girl.”
”I believe you are a 'demon'--your jealousy has been the bane of your whole life and mine; and now you have ruined the future of as beautiful and pure a girl as ever walked the earth,” said Gerald G.o.ddard, with a threatening brow, and in a tone so deadly cold that the woman beside him s.h.i.+vered.
”Pshaw! don't be so tragic,” she said, after a moment, and a.s.suming an air of lightness, ”the affair will end all right--when Edith comes fully to herself and realizes the situation, I am sure she will make up her mind to submit gracefully to the inevitable.”
”She shall not--I will help her to break the tie that binds her to him.”
”Will you?” mockingly questioned his wife. ”How pray?”