Her voice shook--her eyes were ablaze with indignation. Roxmouth flicked a little ash off his cigar.
"Why, of course not!" he replied--"But who does these dreadful things? Are they done at all except in your imagination?"
"YOU do them!" said Maryllia, passionately--"And you have always done them! When I tell you once and for all that I have given up every chance I ever had of being my aunt's heiress--that I shall never be a rich woman,--and that I would far rather die a beggar than be your wife, will you not understand me?--will you not leave me alone?"
He looked at her with quizzical amusement.
"Do you really want to be left alone?" he asked--"Or in a 'solitude a deux'--with the parson?"
She was silent, though her silence cost her an effort. But she knew that the least word she might say concerning Walden would be wilfully misconstrued. She knew that Roxmouth was waiting for her to burst out with some indignant denial of his suggestions--something that he might twist and turn in his own fashion and repeat afterwards to all his and her acquaintances. She cared nothing for herself, but she was full of dread lest Walden's name should be bandied up and down on the scurrilous tongues of that 'upper class' throng, who, because they spend their lives in nothing nobler than political intrigue and sensual indulgence, are politely set aside as froth and scum by the saner, cleaner world, and classified as the 'Smart Set.' Roxmouth watched her furtively. His clear-cut face, white skin and sandy hair shone all together with an oily lustre in the moonlight;--there was a hard cold gleam in his eyes.
"It would be a pretty little story for the society press," he said, after a pause--"How the bewitching Maryllia Vancourt resigned the brilliancy of her social life for a dream of love with an elderly country clergyman! By Heaven! No one would believe it! But,"--and he waited a minute, then continued--"It's a story that shall never be told so far as I am concerned--if--" He broke off, and looked meditatively at the end of his cigar. "There is always an 'if'-- unfortunately!"
Maryllia smiled coldly.
"That is a threat,"--she said--"But it does not affect me! Nothing that you can do or say will make me consent to marry you. You have slandered me already--you can slander me again for all I care. But I will never be your wife."