At last she was able to reply calmly--
"Indeed, Fareham, you do wrong to take this matter so passionately. You may
trust my sister and me. On my honour, you have no cause to be angry with
either of us."
"And when I gave you this letter to read," he went on, disregarding her
protestations, "you knew that you were coming here to meet a lover. You
hurried away from me, dissembler as you were, to steal to this lonely place
at midnight, to fling yourself into his arms. Tell me where he is hiding,
that I may kill him; now, while I pant for vengeance. Such rage as mine
cannot wait for idle forms. Now, now, now, is the time to reckon with your
seducer!"
"Fareham, you cover me with insults!"
He had rushed to the door, still carrying his naked sword; but he turned
back as she spoke, and stood looking at her from head to foot with a savage
scornfulness.
"Insult!" he cried. "You have sunk too low for insult. There are no words
that I know vile enough to stigmatise such disgrace as yours! Do you
know what you have been to me, Angela? A saint--a star; ineffably pure,
ineffably remote; a creature to worship at a distance; for whose sake it
was scarce a sacrifice to repress all that is common to the base heart of
man; from whom a kind word was enough for happiness--so pure, so far away,
so detached from this vile age we live in.
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