He laughed, scarcely knowing what he did.
"Not much use in that, Fin," he said drearily, hopelessly. "You acted like – well, like a woman, I suppose – ."
"Oh!" she moaned. "I acted like a demon. I hadn't any pity, any mercy! I watched her getting whiter and whiter – I heard her cry out as if I'd stabbed her – ."
He put up his hand to silence her.
"That – that will do, Fin!" he said hoarsely.
"But I should have given in to her and kept back the lies if you hadn't sent me this."
She put her hand to her bosom and drew out the locket. "That gave me the pluck and the obstinacy. I thought after all you cared for me – ." She stopped. "It was a mistake all round, and – and – so I don't care to keep it any longer. Take it, Yorke."
He shook his head; but she put the locket in his hand.
"Do you think I'd keep it now I know you didn't mean it for me, but for her? Not me! Take it and – well, give me the other."
He suffered her to close his hand over the locket; and she took the pendant and laid it on the pillow.
"I know now why she put her hand to her bosom once or twice; this was lying there. Poor girl! Yes, I can be sorry for her, for I knew what she felt. But it's too late now, Yorke, I suppose. You've got to marry Lady Eleanor, eh? Well," as he remained silent, "let's hope that poor young thing has forgotten you!"
Yorke got up and strode up and down, biting his lip and shutting and opening his hands.
"Better go now, Yorke," she said with a sigh. "I know you hate the sight of me; that's only natural – ."
"No, no, Fin!" he said with a frown. "I'm not so bad as that; but I feel confused and half mad. God forgive us all, we all seem to have conspired to work her harm! Even Dolph – and I who loved her! Yes, I'd better go, Fin; but I will come back – ."
"No, you won't," she said quietly, "at least, not till after your marriage. But, Yorke – ."
"Well?" he asked.
"If – if you should ever find her – Miss Lisle," she said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I wish – I wish you'd tell her I'd made a clean breast of it; and – and ask her to come and see me. She'd come; she's one of that sort of women that are always ready to forgive; and she'll forgive me right enough when she sees me lying here helpless as a log, and remembers how hard I fought beside her up that beastly cliff that day! Go now, Yorke, and – well, I don't know that God would bless you any the sooner for my asking Him. But you have been very easy with me, Yorke, after all I've done to make you wretched."
Her voice died away inaudibly at the last words, and she took the hand he gave her and laid it on her lips.
Yorke went out with the locket in his hand, and a burning fire in his heart and brain.
This butterfly o' the wind, this dancing girl, had wrecked Leslie's and his lives! Wrecked and ruined them irreparably. She had spoken of his finding Leslie; but where could he look for her, and, indeed, would it not be better that they should never meet again? He had got to marry Eleanor – and the day after to-morrow; Finetta's confession – like most confessions by the way – had come too late!
In a frame of mind which beggars description he went to Bury Street and resumed his packing; then, in the midst of it, he remembered that he had promised to go to White Place that evening.
This butterfly o' the wind, this dancing girl, had wrecked his life! As he thought of this, he found the locket in his pocket, and transferred it to that of the waistcoat he was putting on.
CHAPTER XL.
"MY SWEET GIRL LOVE."
When he got down to White Place – he had walked from the station – he found Lady Denby alone.
"Eleanor has gone out," she said, "but only for a stroll. As you did not come by the usual train she gave you up. Why didn't you wire?"
"I forgot it," he replied absently.
Lady Denby laughed ironically.
"What is the use of having a special wire if you don't use it?" she said. "Have you had your dinner?"
"Oh, yes," he replied, though he had eaten nothing since the morning.
Lady Denby looked at him curiously.
"You are not looking very well, Yorke," she said. "You seem tired and fagged, and a change is what you want."
"Well, I shall get it directly," he said, with unconscious grimness. "Which way has Eleanor gone? I'll see if I can find her."
"She said something about going to the village," Lady Denby replied; "but I don't expect she will get beyond the grounds. Have some coffee or something."
He mixed a brandy and soda, more to please her than himself, and then went out.
Remembering what Lady Denby had said, he should have kept to the park, but he was not thinking of Lady Eleanor or the way she had taken, and he went straight out of the gate and along the road to the village.
He was thinking, alas! not of the woman he was going to marry in two days' time, but of Leslie Lisle; thinking that, perhaps, some day he should meet her. What would he say to her then? Would it be just simply "How do you do, Miss Lisle?" and go on his way again? Ah, no! Let him meet her when he might, sooner or later he would have to tell her how they had been separated, and why, when the knowledge of Finetta's perfidy had come to him, it was too late to go back to her! He would have to tell her that, would have to clear himself in her eyes!
He walked on, wrapt in bitter thoughts, haunted by the spectre which takes the shape of 'It might have been,' and found himself far on the London Road. He had, all unconsciously, passed the village, and he would have still kept striding along, but that a heavy shower, which had been threatening for some time, came pelting down. So he turned back at a slower pace, and, as most men do when they are getting wet, thought of a pipe.
He found his pipe and a tobacco pouch, but his match box was absent. He hunted in the corners and crevices of his pockets for a match, but unsuccessfully, and he was about to give up the idea of a smoke, when he came upon the school and school-house. He stopped and looked at it absently; he had been so absorbed in gloomy reverie as he passed it on his way from White Place that he had not noticed it.
He stood by the little white gate in the close-cut hedge for a moment or two to see if any one was about of whom he could ask a light; then, as no one appeared, he pushed open the gate, walked up the narrow, weedless path, and knocked at the door.
A neat, a remarkably neat, little handmaid answered the knock, and in severe accents said:
"Round to the back-door, my man."
Yorke had his coat collar turned up, and his short pipe in his mouth, and the little maid had taken him for a tramp or a pedlar.
He smiled, and entering into the humor of the thing, obediently, not to say humbly, went round the house and presented himself at the back-door.
"Well, what is it?" asked the girl.
"Oh, I only want a light for my pipe," said Yorke. "Will you be good enough to give me one?"
She saw her mistake in a moment, and grew crimson.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but we have so many tra – er – so many strange kind of people come knocking."
"Then you do well to be careful," he said.
She ran and brought him a box of matches, and he lit his pipe and thanked her, raising his hat, and was turning to go out of the garden, when she said:
"Wouldn't you like to wait till the heaviest of the rain is over, sir?"
Yorke would have declined, but that he was afraid she might think he was wounded by her mistaking him for a tramp, so he said:
"Thank you, I'll stand up under the hedge for a minute or two," and he stood under a couple of the limes that bordered the side of the garden, and puffed at his pipe. It did occur to him to wonder whether Lady Eleanor had got back to White Place before the storm broke, and whether she, in her turn, would wonder where he was; but he was just in that frame of mind in which a man is glad to stand still and smoke and think, and keep as far away as possible from friends and acquaintances. Besides, after the next two days he might find it difficult, if not impossible, to smoke a pipe in solitude. So he leant against the trunk of the lime and went over in his mind all the details of Finetta's confession. He saw it all as plainly as if he had been present at the scene between her and Leslie. He understood how quick Leslie would be to surrender him to the woman who had, as she thought, a prior right; how greatly Leslie's maiden pride and jealousy would aid Finetta in her task. And as he thought, his soul rose in bitter protest against the fate which had wrecked both their lives.
He finished his pipe, and was refilling it, and had his hand upon the tobacco pouch, when suddenly he heard a voice singing.
He paid no attention for a moment, then his hands grew motionless, and he clutched the pouch tightly, and he looked up with a sudden flush, a sudden light flashing in his eyes. For the voice was singing this song:
My sweet girl love, with frank blue eyes,
Though years have passed, I see you still,
There where you stand beside the mill,
Beneath the bright autumnal skies.
Then he laughed, laughed with a bitter, self-mockery.
"I'm going out of my mind," he said, with intense self-scorn. "Here's some girl singing a silly ballad, which no doubt sells by the thousand, and I'm actually trying to persuade myself that the voice is like Leslie's, just because I once heard her singing it! Yes, I'm going mad, there's no doubt of that," and half-angrily he pressed his cap on his forehead, savagely struck a light and lit his pipe, and prepared to march out, though it was still raining in torrents. But as he passed the front window, framed in the red autumnal leaves of the Virginian creeper, he heard the voice more distinctly, and he stopped and began to tremble, looking hard toward the window.
"I am a fool!" he told himself. "I have been thinking of her so constantly. I am so much upset that I should think any young girl I happened to meet like her, any voice I heard like hers. This one, for instance, is – is – ."
The perspiration broke out upon his forehead, and the hand that held the pipe shook, for at that moment the last words of the song died away with a peculiar little trill, a soft little sigh, which he remembered in Leslie's voice, and hers alone, most distinctly.
"It is easily proved," he muttered, and he stole across the small square of grass up to the window, and looked in.
For a moment or two the room seemed dark, the objects within it indistinct; then he saw a girl seated at the piano, a slim, graceful figure in some black, softly draping stuff, that of itself seemed to speak of Leslie. She was seated with her back toward the window, but as he leant on the window-sill she moved her head, and a cry burst from him. It was Leslie!
He drew back from the window-sill and leant against the wall, under the dripping Virginian creeper, his heart knocking against his ribs, his lips parched and dry.
What should he do? Go into the house and speak to her? Ah, not now! Not now, just before his marriage! And yet – oh, God! – how hard it was! Leslie in there – Leslie in there, still deeming him false, and a few words would undeceive her. He took a couple of steps to the door, then pulled up, and in another moment or two he would have rushed down the path and out of the gate, but there rose, even as he turned, the sweet, sad voice again, and his resolution melted like wax in a furnace. He opened the door, went along the passage, paused a moment to collect some fragment of self-possession and self-restraint, then entered the parlor.
He stood gazing at her with hungry, longing eyes, and an ache in his heart, which grew almost unendurable, then he said as softly as he could:
"Leslie!"
She stopped singing, but did not turn her head. She had, in fancy, heard him breathe her name so often.
"Leslie!" he repeated, drawing nearer.
Her hands grew motionless on the keys, and she looked round. Then she rose slowly, like a ghost, her face growing whiter and whiter, her eyes dilating, and "Yorke" breathed from her parted lips.
"Leslie!" he said again. "Oh, Leslie!" and he held out his arms to her.
She seemed to struggle against the potent influence he exerted, then she came nearer, swaying a little, like one walking in her sleep.
"Oh, my darling, my darling, is it you? Really you?" he said in a subdued voice, as if he feared to startle, frighten her.
She was almost in his arms, her bosom heaving, her lips quivering, when she seemed to remember; and with a cry, the saddest he had ever heard, she swayed away from him, extending one hand as if to keep him off.
He caught the hand, and held it in a grasp like that of a vice.
"You shrink from me, Leslie? Oh, my dearest – to shrink from me!"
She seemed to struggle for voice, and found it at last.
"Why – why have you come?" she breathed.
"Why have you hidden from me?" he responded, and there was almost a touch of indignation in the earnest, pleading voice. "Why did you do it, Leslie? Oh, God, if you knew what I have suffered – ."
"You – have – suffered?" she repeated. "Ah, no, not you! It is I – ." She stopped and sighed deeply.
He almost forced her, by her hand, into a chair and knelt beside her.
"Leslie, Leslie!" he cried, striving hard to speak calmly and coolly. "Listen to me. I'll try and explain. I'll try and tell you how this cruel thing has been brought about. It will be hard work, for the words sound like a jumble in my ears, and it is all I can do to keep myself from taking you in my arms – ah, don't shrink, don't be frightened! I will leave you to be the judge when – when you have heard all. Leslie, that woman Finetta – ."
She started and turned her face from him.
"Leslie! Leslie! She lied. She told you she was to be my wife. It was not true, then or ever! As Heaven is my witness, there was not even love between us, on my side. I had parted from her two days before – ."
"Oh, hush!" she broke out with a kind of jerk. "I remember every word – every word. It is burnt into my heart."
"It was false!" he said vehemently. "I can understand, imagine, all she would say! She is an actress – would have deceived a woman of the world, much more easily one all innocence and purity like yourself, dearest."
She looked at him as if a glimmer of hope was dawning, then her face clouded again, and she tried to take her hand from his, but unsuccessfully.
"You – you forget," she murmured. "The portrait. You sent it to her the day you sent my gift to me! Your portrait!"
He could have groaned.
"No," he thundered, gripping her hand. "I sent that to you!"
"To – me?" fell from her lips.
"Yes, to you! The diamond thing I sent to her – listen and believe me, Leslie. Look in my eyes! Ah, dearest, do you think – how could you ever have thought – that I would be false to you? Why, I should never have believed you false to me, though an angel had whispered it. I sent the pendant to her because we had been good friends, and – and – ah, I must speak openly – because I knew that she wished we might be something more. It was a parting gift – a parting gift – from friend to friend, that was all! But fate chose that I, like a fool, should misdirect the packages! Leslie, the portrait was for you, the diamonds for her! Ah, think, consider, dearest! Should I send such a thing to you? To you, whose taste is so pure and refined!"
She began to tremble, and he drew still nearer to her.
"Why – why – did you not come – and – tell me this sooner?" she almost wailed.
He hung his head for a moment, then he looked up and met her eyes steadily.
"Leslie, I will tell you all. I – I have wronged you cruelly. I have been a fool. Yes, so great, so insensate a fool as to believe that, having learned the imposition we had practised on you, having discovered that I was not the Duke of Rothbury, you repented of our engagement – ."
"You were not the Duke of Rothbury," she said, her brows knit; "are you not?"
"Oh, if Dolph were only here!" he groaned. "No, dearest, I am not; and at that time there was little chance of my ever being the duke. It is Dolph – Mr. Temple – as we called him, who is the duke. It was a whim – a freak of his. Oh, you see!"
Yes, she saw, and the color came to her face, and a proud, wounded look into her lovely eyes.
"And – and you thought that it was because I believed you to be a duke – and only because of that – that I – ."
"Leslie, here on my knees I plead guilty. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself! But, dearest, think! The last words you spoke to Dolph the morning you parted with him! Think, was there not some slight excuse?"
She hung her head.
"It – it is all past now," she said at last with a deep sigh. "We cannot re-live it all! Ah, no!"
And she turned her face away as a tear rolled down her cheek. Before that tear he lost his self-command. He forgot Lady Eleanor, forgot that his wedding-day, as fixed, was within a few hours, and he caught her in his arms. She uttered a low cry, and bent away from him, her hands against his breast; but before the fire, the anguish of appeal, in his eyes her own fell; she trembled and quivered like an imprisoned bird, then felt herself crushed against his breast.
"Oh, my darling, my darling!" he murmured brokenly. "As if you and I could part again! No, no, never again while life lasts! Never again, dearest. Oh, don't cry!" He kissed the tears away, and laid her face against his lovingly, protectingly. "Don't cry, Leslie, or I shall think you can never forgive me! And – ." He looked at the black dress. "Where is your father?"
"Oh, Yorke, Yorke!" she sobbed.
"Hush, hush! dearest! And you bore it all alone!" he groaned. "And I should have been by your side to help and comfort you! What shall I say, what shall I do, to prove my remorse? It was all my fault!"
"No, no," she responded, woman-like. "Not all, Yorke! I – I ought not to have believed that – that woman. I felt that she was not – not a good woman, and I ought not to have trusted her. But the portrait, Yorke! It all seemed so clear, so conclusive."
"I know," he said gravely; "I have heard it from her own lips."
"From her own lips?"
"Yes," he said gently. "She has confessed it all. If she sinned, she has been punished. Finetta, the dancing girl, will never dance again; she is helpless and crippled for life."
Leslie uttered a low cry of horror and shuddered.
"Oh, God forgive me! and I was just wishing she might be punished. Oh, Yorke, where is she? I – I cannot forget her temptation, and I – I will try and forgive her!"
"She wants to see you, dearest!" he said; "I left her this morning with a prayer for your forgiveness on her lips. I will take you to see her, and she will explain all that may be still dark. See, she sent you this," and he put the locket in her hand. "But, dearest, I want to hear all about yourself. Why are you here – and are you here alone?"
"I am the teacher here," she said. "Let me go now, Yorke, dear!"
"No, no!" he said, "I cannot!" and he held her still closer. "Tell it to me with your head lying on my shoulder, your heart to mine – ." He stopped suddenly, and Leslie following his eyes, would have broken from him, for two persons had entered, Lucy and Ralph Duncombe, but Yorke still held her.
Lucy uttered a low cry of amazement, and the color flew to her face.
"Oh, come away," she whispered to Ralph.
But he strode in and confronted Yorke with indignant menace.
"No!" he said, sternly; "I am Miss Lisle's friend, and it is my duty to protect her!"
"To protect her!" repeated Yorke mechanically, and staring at him.
"Yes!" said Ralph. "Leslie – Miss Lisle – do you know who this gentleman is?"
Leslie, white and red by turns, raised her eyes.
"Yes!" she said, almost inaudibly.
Ralph Duncombe started.
"You know who he is? And – and that he is engaged – to be married to Lady Eleanor Dallas the day after to-morrow!"
CHAPTER XLI.
"IT IS THE TRUTH."
Leslie looked at Ralph Duncombe vacantly for a moment, as if she had failed to understand him; then the color began to ebb from her face and left it white, and she strove feebly to release herself from Yorke's enfolding arms.
He did not speak, but he glared at Ralph Duncombe in a kind of half-dazed fury.
Lucy was the first to break the awful silence which followed Ralph's announcement.
"Oh, no, no, it is not – it cannot be true! There must be some mistake, Ralph," she exclaimed, almost inaudibly.
Ralph Duncombe bit his lip. He had spoken in the first heat of his amazement and indignation, and was, perhaps, sorry that he had done so, or, at any rate, that he had spoken so precipitately.
"It is true," he said doggedly. "Ask him! It is for him to explain."
All eyes were fixed on Yorke. The two women's with an anxious, expectant look in them, as if they were only waiting for his contradiction and denial.
But his face grew as white as Leslie's, and after looking round wildly he hung his head and groaned.
Leslie drew herself away from him slowly, her gaze still fixed on him, her bosom heaving, and dropped the locket from her hand. It went with a dull thud to the floor. She had been in Paradise a moment or two ago, had been filled with a joy which in its intensity almost atoned for the past months of sorrow and anguish; and now she was plunged back into the depths again.
It was Lucy who spoke again. Losing her timidity in her anxiety for the friend she loved so dearly; she glided to Yorke, and put her hand on his arm.
"Oh, speak, sir!" she implored him. "Say that it is not true! Don't you see that she is waiting?" And she looked over her shoulder at Leslie.
Yorke followed her eyes, then looked down at her pretty, anxious face despairingly.
"I cannot!" fell from his lips.
Lucy shrank back from him, and stole her arm round Leslie to support her.
"You cannot! Oh!"
Ralph Duncombe came further into the room.
"He cannot deny it," he said. "I know – am a friend of Lady Eleanor Dallas. I know this gentleman, though he does not know me. He is Lord Auchester, the heir, now, to the Duke of Rothbury, and he is engaged to marry Lady Eleanor. The wedding is to take place the day after to-morrow. I am sorry – yes, I am sorry – that I blurted out the truth! but the sight of him – well, I am an old friend of Miss Lisle's, and I claim the right to protect her. If his lordship considers that I have exceeded a friend's privilege he is at liberty to demand any satisfaction I can give him."
Yorke raised his head. His face was set and white, his eyes heavy with despair. He felt as the ancient gladiator felt at the moment the fatal net caught him in its meshes, and the dagger was descending to strike him to the heart; as the miserable wretch in the dock feels when the sentence of death is being pronounced. For a moment it seemed as if he could not speak, and he wiped the cold sweat from his face mechanically; then he said in a low, broken voice:
"It is the truth!" He looked at Leslie, scarcely imploringly so much as hopelessly, despairingly. "I had forgotten it! Yes," he went on almost fiercely, "I had forgotten it! I was so happy that I lost all memory of it! You, sir, who came as an accuser, who no doubt, think me an utter blackguard and lost to all sense of honour, shall be my judge as well as my accuser."
Ralph Duncombe shook his head.
"I do not wish – ," he began; but Yorke silenced him with a gesture that was full of the dignity of despair.
"Hear me, please! Miss Lisle and I were engaged to be married – that is, months ago. We met at a place called Portmaris, and – " he glanced at Lucy – "sir, I loved her as truly and devotedly as you can love this young lady. We were to have been married – ."
"You!" exclaimed Ralph Duncombe. "No, it was the Duke of Rothbury to whom she was engaged."
Yorke sighed.
"No, it was to me," he said. "I exchanged titles with my cousin, the duke; why, need not be explained. Leslie – Miss Lisle understands. It was a foolish trick, and, like most follies, has brought trouble and sorrow in its wake. But for that stupid freak – . We were to have been married, but on the eve of our marriage we were separated, torn apart by a wicked lie, which, aided by a wrongly addressed envelope, served to ruin our happiness. Miss Lisle thought I had deceived her, and, acting on the promptings of a heart that is all truth and purity, she cast me off. I lost her in all senses of the word, and I felt that I deserved to lose her. Now, sir, call your imagination to your aid. Look on this young lady whom you love, and try and put yourself in my place. Picture to yourself my state and condition, having lost all that made life worth living! Ah, you can!" for Ralph Duncombe looked down and bit his lip.
Yorke passed his hand across his brow and sighed heavily, and for a moment seemed as if he had finished his explanation; then he looked up, as if awaking suddenly.
"I was in that state in which a man might win pity from his worst enemy; but I had an enemy – of whose existence I was and am still ignorant – and he chose that moment to hunt me into still greater straits. I have been a fool in more senses of the word than one. I was heavily in debt. It was because of that millstone of debt that I had induced Miss Lisle to consent to a secret marriage. My enemy, whoever he was, discovered this; he bought up all my debts and liabilities, and constituting himself my sole creditor, he came down upon me with all the weight of those debts, meaning to crush me. I should have gone under, never to rise again. I should have been ruined and disgraced, should have brought disgrace upon the name I bear and all connected with me. But – ." He paused, and his face worked. "There was one who – who had some little regard for me, and – and she stepped in and saved me; lifted me out of the mire and set me on my feet again; saved me from the consequences of my folly, and saved the old name from shame. Gratitude is a poor word to describe what I felt toward her! I – I made the debt I owed her still heavier by asking her to take that which she had saved. And – and in the goodness of her heart she consented! From that time until now – until now! – I have been true to her in deed and intent. I have striven to forget the woman to whom I had given my heart, there at Portmaris, the woman who was all the world to me" – his voice broke – "the woman whom I lost on our wedding eve! To-day, to-day only, have I heard from the woman who separated us a full confession of the deception by which she effected her purpose. But I knew it was too late to regain my lost happiness. Too late! I never expected to see Miss Lisle again, scarcely hoped to do so, excepting that it might be once before I died, that I might say to her, 'With all my faults and follies, I was true to you, Leslie!'"
Leslie, standing rigid and motionless, moaned faintly.
He cast an agonized look at her.
"Then – then I came by the merest chance to this cottage. I heard her voice. I stole in, and in the joy of meeting her, and reconciliation with her, in that great joy the past was blotted out from my mind, and I forgot – I say I forgot that I was betrothed to another, that I was within a few hours of being wedded to another."
His voice died away, and he stood with downcast head and vacant eyes. Then he looked up.
"There is my story, sir! You say that you are a friend of – of Miss Lisle's. It is for you to demand – exact satisfaction for the wrong that I have done her. But, mind, that wrong dates only from to-day! I have loved her – ." He broke down for a moment; then went on almost sternly, "What I have to do, what I can do to atone, I will do! I – I can never hope for Miss Lisle's forgiveness – ."
Leslie's hands writhed together, and Lucy's arm held her still more firmly.
"I can never hope to see her again. But I will say this in her hearing, that I would lay down my life to wipe out the past, to render her happy in the future."
Leslie's hands stole up to her face.
"For the rest," he went on, "I will tell Lady Eleanor all that I have told you. It is her due. She shall be the judge; she shall dispose of my future. I owe her much more than can be told."
He stopped, then looked up, and there was a light in his eyes which made Lucy shrink.
"One thing more. I have spoken of the way in which I was hunted down. That part of the business is a mystery still. But I am going to solve it! I am going to find Mr. Ralph Duncombe."
Lucy broke from Leslie, and with a cry of terror flung herself on Ralph's arm, and looked over her shoulder at Yorke's stern face.
Yorke stopped and started, his face grew red and then white, and he strode forward.
"What!" he cried, under his breath. "Are you – ."
Ralph Duncombe put Lucy from him gently, and came a step forward to meet him.
"Yes," he said gravely, "my name is Ralph Duncombe."
"You!" said Yorke, as if his amazement over-mastered his anger. "Do you mean that it is you who bought up my debts and hunted me down?"
"It was I!" said Ralph stolidly.
"But – but – ." Yorke groaned. "Why? Why, what harm did I ever do you? Why, man, I never saw you before to-day. I never saw your name until I read it in the writs! Why? Why?" and he stood with clenched hands, the veins standing out on his forehead.
Ralph bit his lip, but he looked full into Yorke's blazing eyes.
"Why did you do it?" demanded Yorke in a low voice, which was all the more ominous for its quietude. "What was I to you that you should concern yourself in my affairs? That you should try and ruin me? It was you who drove me – ," he was going to say "into a marriage with Lady Eleanor," but he stopped himself in time. "Why did you do it?"
Ralph Duncombe remained silent for a moment, then he said:
"My lord, I desired to break off the engagement between you and Miss Lisle."
"You? Why? Ah – ."
The light flashed upon him; then he glanced at Lucy, who stood, trembling, with one hand upon Ralph's arm.
"Yes," said Ralph. "But Miss Lisle had rejected me, she would never have been my wife, and, in saying this, I will say no more! I have another reason."
"That reason?" demanded Yorke, with barely restrained fury.
"I decline to answer," said Ralph.
Yorke made a movement as if to seize him or strike him. Lucy screamed, Leslie seemed as if to spring between them, then flung herself on her knees beside a chair, and this recalled Yorke to himself.