He paled and gnawed at his thick lip.
"You talk like a madwoman," he said, hoarsely.
She nodded.
"Yes, I am mad; I know it; I know it! But I shall never be sane again.
All my days and all my nights are consumed in this madness. I think of
him--I call up his face--ah!" She flung her hands before her face and
swayed to and fro as if she were half dazed, half giddy with passion.
"And all day I have to fight against the risk, the peril of discovery.
To feel the women's eyes on me when he comes near, to feel that their
ears are strained to catch the note in my voice which will give me
away, place me under their scorn--and to know that, try as I will, my
voice, my eyes will grow tender as they rest on him, as I speak to him!
To have to hide, to conceal, to crush down my heart while it is aching,
throbbing with the torture of my love for him!"
He strode from her, then came back. The sight of the storm within her
had moved him: for, after all, this strange girl was his daughter,
flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. He swore under his breath and
struggled for speech.
"And--and the man Stafford?" he said. "He--he has not said--D--n it!
you don't mean to tell me that he is absolutely indifferent, that
he--he doesn't care?"
"I'll tell you the truth," she said. "I swore to myself that I would.
There is too much at stake for me to conceal anything. He
does--not--care for me."
Ralph Falconer uttered a sharp snarl of shame and resentment.
"He doesn't? and yet you--you want to marry him!"
She made a gesture with her hands which was more eloquent than words.
"Perhaps--perhaps there is someone else? Someone of the other women
here?" he suggested, moodily.
"Yes, there is someone else," she said, with the same calm decision.
"No, it is not one of the women here; it is a girl in the place; a
farmer's daughter, I think. It is only a _liaison_, a vulgar
intrigue--"
He uttered an exclamation.
"And yet _that_ doesn't cure you!"
She shook her head and smiled.
"No; my case is incurable. Father, if he were engaged to anyone of the
women here, to someone his equal, I should still love him and want him;
yes, and move heaven and earth to get him. But this is only a
flirtation with some country girl--she meets him on the hill-side by
the river--anywhere. I have seen them, at a distance, once or twice.
She is of no importance. She has caught his fancy, and will soon fail
to hold it."