Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/50

Rh that haughty wrath, that self-enforced restraint, she looked like some superb stag, some delicate antelope, at bay, and panting to spring on its foes.

"Do yon think such taunts as that—your taunts! have power to wound me for one instant? Where is your boasted wisdom? It has forsaken you strangely, as strangely as your memory! Whatever I have lost, the loss is due to you; whatever I have erred in, the error lies with you; whatever wreck my life has made, is wrecked through you; whatever taint is on my name, was brought there first by you. You have tried my patience long and often; you have tried it once too much. You have trusted to the tie that is between us; it is broken for ever as if it had not been. Insult through you I have continually borne. What the world has said has been as nothing to me, my life is not ruled by it, my honour is not touched by it. But insult from you I will never bear. Be my destroyer as you choose; but your accomplice again you shall never make me—nor your dupe. Stand aside, sir, I will hear no more words."

He had laid his hand upon her arm, she shook him off with an action as intense in its gesture of contempt as her words had been intense in their