"By Heaven, you make me feel--mad!" he said, with suppressed anger.
"You tell me unblushingly, to my face, that you have fallen in love
with the son of my old enemy, that you want to marry him--you ask me to
help you, to--to forego my just revenge, to use my hold over him as a
lever, to induce him, force him--Good God! have you no sense of right
or wrong, are you utterly devoid of--of modesty, of womanly pride!"
He glowered down upon her with flushed face and angry eyes; but she was
quite unmoved by his outburst, and still met his gaze steadily, almost
reflectingly.
"A fortnight ago I should have asked myself that question--and as
angrily as you; but I can't now. It has gone too far."
"Gone too far! You mean--"
"That I have grown to love him so much, so dearly, that life without
him--"
"By God! you will have to live without him, for I'll not help you to
get him," he said, fiercely. "Stafford Orme, Stephen Orme's boy! No!
Put the thing out of your mind, Maude! See here--I don't want to be
angry; I'll take back all I said: you--well, you surprised me, and
shocked me, too, I'll admit--you're a strange girl, and say things that
you don't mean, and in a cold-blooded way that gives me fits. Say no
more about it; put the idea out of your head."
She laughed, and rose, and gliding to him, put her hand on his arm.
"My dear father," she said in a low voice, but with a strange and
subtle vibration in it, as if the passion with which she was struggling
threatened to burst forth, "you don't know what you ask; you don't know
what love is--and you don't know what I am! I didn't know myself until
the last few days; until a gradual light shone on the truth and showed
me my heart, the heart I once thought would never grow warm with love!
Oh, I was a fool! I played with fire, and I have been burned. I am
burning still!" She pressed her hand against her bosom, and for an
instant the passion within her darted from her eyes and twisted the
red, perfectly formed lips. Her hand tightened on his arm, her breath
came pantingly, now quickly, now slowly. "Father I have come to you.
Most girls go to their mother. I have none. I come to you because
I--must! You ask me to put the--the idea out of my head." She laughed a
low laugh of self-scorn and bitterness. "Do you think I have not tried
to steel, to harden, my heart against this feeling which has been
creeping insidiously over me, creeping, stealing gliding like a cloud
until it has enveloped me? I have fought against it as never woman
fought against the approach of love. The first day--it was the day he
took me on the lake--ah, you don't remember, but I--Shall I ever forget
it!--the first day my heart went out to him I tried to call it back, to
laugh at my weakness, to call myself a fool! And I thought I had
succeeded in driving the insidious feeling away. But I was wrong. It
was there in my heart already, and day by day, as I saw him, as I heard
him speak, the thing grew until I could not see him cross the lawn,
hear him speak to the dog, without thrilling, without shivering,
shuddering! Father, have pity on me! No, I won't ask for pity! I won't
have it! But I ask, I demand, sympathy, your help! Father," she drew
nearer to him and looked into his eyes with an awful look of
desperation, of broken pride, of the aching craving of love, "you must
help me. I love him, I must be his wife--I cannot live without him, I
will not!"