`What's to do with you, Helen?' said he. `Why couldn't you come to make tea for us? and what the deuce are you here for, in the dark? What ails you, young woman--you look like a ghost?' he continued, surveying me by the light of his candle.
`No matter,' I answered-- `to you---you have no longer any regard for me, it appears; and I have no longer any for you.'
`Hal-low! what the devil is this?' he muttered.
`I would leave you to-morrow,' continued I, `and never again come under this roof, but for my child'--I paused a moment to steady my voice.
`What in the devil's name is this, Helen?' cried he. `What can you be driving at?'
`You know, perfectly well. Let us waste no time in useless explanation, but tell me, will you--'
He vehemently swore he knew nothing about it, and insisted upon hearing what poisonous old woman had been blackening his name, and what infamous lies I had been fool enough to believe.
`Spare yourself the trouble of forswearing yourself and racking your brains to stifle truth with falsehood,' I coldly replied. `I have trusted to the testimony of no third person. I was in the shrubbery this evening, and I saw and heard for myself.'
This was enough. He uttered a suppressed exclamation of consternation and dismay, and muttering, `I shall catch it now!' set down his candle on the nearest chair, and, rearing his back against the wall, stood confronting me with folded arms.
`Well!--what then?' said he, with the calm insolence of mingled shamelessness and desperation.
`Only this,' returned I: `will you let me take our child and what remains of my fortune, and go?'
`Go where?'
`Anywhere, where he will be safe from your contaminating influence, and I shall be delivered from your presence--and you from mine.'
`No--by Jove I won't!'
`Will you let me have the child then, without the money?'
`Nor yourself without the child. Do you think I'm going to be made the talk of the country, for your fastidious caprices?'
`Then I must stay here; to be hated and despised.--But henceforth, we are husband and wife only in the name.'
`Very good.'
`I am your child's mother, and your housekeeper--nothing more. So you need not trouble yourself any longer, to feign the love you cannot feel: I will exact no more heartless caresses from you--nor offer--nor endure them either--I will not be mocked with the empty husk of conjugal endearments, when you have given the substance to another!'
`Very good--if you please. We shall see who will tire first, my lady.'