“The remembrance will avail you nothing as long as I live. I tell you again, I insist on your written engagement, though it were only to show that I have ceased to believe in your word. Write at once—do you hear me?—Write!”
I neither moved nor answered. His face changed again, and grew livid; his fingers trembled convulsively, and crumpled the sheet of paper, as he tried to take it up from the table on which it lay.
“You refuse?” he said quickly.
“I have already told you, Sir—”
“Go!” he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, “go out from this house, never to return to it again—go, not as a stranger to me, but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made: there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty of. But I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are leagued, to take warning: I have wealth, power, and position; and there is no use to which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the fair fame of this family. Leave me, remembering that—and leave me forever!”
Just as he uttered the last word, just as my hand was on the lock of the door, a faint sound—something between breathing and speaking—was audible in the direction of the library. He started, and looked round. Impelled, I know not how, I paused on the point of going out. My eyes followed his, and fixed on the cloth door which led into the library.
It opened a little—then shut again—then opened wide. Slowly and noiselessly, Clara came into the room.
The silence and suddenness of her entrance at such a moment; the look of terror which changed to unnatural vacancy the wonted softness