“ Mr. Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope you may find a worthy wife before long and be very happy. But it is no.”
“Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?” he asked, in the same half-suffocated way.
“None whatever.”
“Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my favour?”
“I am quite decided, Mr. Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain there is none.”
“Then,” said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid the knuckles raw and bleeding; “then I hope that I may never kill him!”
The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his livid lips, and with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow, made her so afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he caught her by the arm.
“ Mr. Headstone, let me go. Mr. Headstone, I must call for help!”
“It is I who should call for help,” he said; “you don’t know yet how much I need it.”
The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in another instant; but all at once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as if Death itself had done so.
“There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.”