Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/645

540 feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am going to tell?"

"And what is that," he said, "you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any other woman in her best humour?"

"I tell you nothing," she returned, "until you go back to that chair—except this, once again—Don’t come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!"

"Do you mistake me for your husband?" he retorted, with a grin.

Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair. He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled, irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his nail nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while he feigned to be amused by her caprice.

She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her hand, said:

"I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than endure your touch once more, I would use it on you—and you know it, while I speak—with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that lives."

He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon the floor with a muttered oath.

"How many times," said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, "has your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How often have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?"

"I have no doubt, Ma’am," he replied, "that you have kept a good account, and that it’s pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor wretch, this was well enough—"

"Why, if," she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust, that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, "if all my other reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been enough to hold their place."

"Is that a reason why you have run away with me?" he asked her, tauntingly.

"Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet to-night, and part to-night. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak, will I stay here!"

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.

"I am a woman," she said, confronting him stedfastly, "who from her childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to