“It matters little to me her not being at home,” said Rosa Dartle haughtily, “I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.”
“Me?” replied a soft voice.
At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily’s!
“Yes,” returned Miss Dartle, “I have come to look at you. What? You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?”
The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
“I have come to see,” she said, “James Steerforth’s fancy; the girl who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.”
There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself before it. It was succeeded by a moment’s pause.
When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp upon the ground.
“Stay there!” she said, “or I’ll proclaim you to the house, and the whole street! If you try to evade me , I’ll stop you, if it’s by the hair, and raise the very stones against you!”