“I don't know; that I'll think over. But he shall not marry her--never!”
Bassett sat and looked up with almost as much awe as complacency at the fury he had evoked; for this woman was really at times a poetic impersonation of that fiery passion she was so apt to indulge. She stood before him, her cheek pale, her eyes glittering and roving savagely, and her nostrils literally expanding, while her tall body quivered with wrath, and her clinched knuckles pattered on the table.
“He shall not marry her. I'll kill him first!”
RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his services to break off the obnoxious match. But Miss Somerset was beginning to be mortified at having shown so much passion before a stranger.
“What have you to do with it?” said she, sharply.
“Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything else? There is, now. I see it in your eye. What is it?”
“Sir Charles's estates are mine by right, and they will return to my line if he does not marry and have issue.”
“Oh, I see. That is so like a man. It's always love, and something more important, with you. Well, give me your address. I'll write if I want you.”
“Highly flattered,” said Bassett, ironically-wrote his address and left her.
“DEAR SIR CHARLES--please call here, I want to speak to you.
Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and the lady received him with a gracious and smiling manner, all put on and catlike. She talked with him of indifferent things for more than an hour, still watching to see if he would tell her of his own accord.
When she was quite sure he would not, she said,
“Do you know there's a ridiculous report about that you are going to be married?”
“They even tell her name--Miss Bruce. Do you know the girl?”
“You are, to abandon a woman who has sacrificed all for you.”
Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then smiled; but was too polite to give his thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary; Miss Somerset, whose brave eyes never left the person she was speaking to, fired up at the smile alone, and she burst into a torrent of remonstrance, not to say vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored once or twice to stop it, but it was not to be stopped; so at last he quietly took up his hat, to go.
He was arrested at the door by a rustle and a fall. He turned round, and there was Miss Somerset lying on her back, grinding her white teeth and clutching the air.