Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/341

Rh "Not you! It is Annabella Wilmot you hate, not me."

"I have nothing to do with Annabella Wilmot," said I, burning with indignation.

"But I have, you know," returned he, with peculiar emphasis.

"That is nothing to me sir!" I retorted.

"Is it nothing to you, Helen?—Will you swear it?—Will you?"

"No, I won't, Mr. Huntingdon! and I will go!" cried I, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, or to break out into a tempest of fury.

"Go then, you vixen!" he said; but the instant he released my hand, he had the audacity to put his arm round my neck and kiss me.

Trembling with anger and agitation—and I don't know what besides, I broke away, and got my candle and rushed up stairs to my room. He would not have done so but for that hateful picture! And there he had it still in his possession, an eternal monument to his pride and my humiliation!