.
“Then,” I brokenly rejoined, “I had better leave this place; I do not see what more I have to do or say here.”
“O God!” he cried, detaining me with a gesture full of agony and doubt. “Do not leave me so; let me think. Let me weigh the situation and see where I stand, in Østerrike Drakt Barn your eyes at least. Tell me what my enemy has said!” he demanded, his face, his very form, flashing with a terrible rage that seemed to have as much indignation as fear in it.
“Your enemy,” I Ostaa Halpa Nike Roshe Run Naisten replied, in the steady voice of despair, “accuses you in so many words — of murder.”
I expected to see him recoil, burst forth into cursing or frenzied declamation, by which men betray their inward consternation and remorse; but he did none Ballons de Foot Pas CHer of these things. Instead of that he laughed; a hideous laugh that seemed to shake the rafters above us and echoed in and out of the caverned recesses beneath.
“Accuses me?” he muttered; and it is not in language to express the scorn he infused into the words.
Stunned, and scarcely knowing what to think, I gazed at him helplessly. He seemed to feel my glance, for, after a moment’s contemplation of my face, his manner suddenly changed, and bowing with a grim politeness full of sarcasm, he asked:
“And when did you see my enemy and hold this precious conversation Halpa Moncler Huivi Ja Korkit in which I was accused of murder?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” I answered. “During the time of your mother’s funeral,” I subjoined, startled by the look of stupefaction which crossed his face at my words.
“I don’t understand you,” he murmured, sweeping his hand in Scarpe Nike Air Force 1 Uomo a dazed way over his brow. “You saw him then? Spoke to him? Impossible!”
“It is not a man to whom I allude,” I returned, almost as much agitated as himself. “It is a woman who is your accuser, a woman who seems to feel she has a right to make you suffer, possibly because she has suffered so much herself.”
“A woman!” was all he said; “a woman!” turning pale enough now, God knows.
“Have you no enemies among the women?” I asked, wearied to the soul with the position Maillot Corée du Sud Pas CHer in which my cruel fate had forced me.
“I begin to think I have,” he answered, giving me a look that somehow broke down the barriers of ice between us and made my next words come in a faltering tone:
“And could you stop to bestow a thought upon a man while a woman held your secret? Did you think our sex was so long-suffering, or this special woman so generous ——”
I did not go on, for he had leaped the gap which separated us and had me gently but firmly by the arm.
“Of whom are you speaking?” he demanded. “What woman has my secret — if secret I have? Let me hear her name, now, at once.”
“Is it possible,” I murmured, “that you do not know?”
“The name! the name!” he reiterated, his eyes ablaze, his hand shaking where it grasped my arm.
“Rhoda Colwell,” I returned, looking him steadily in the eye.
“Impossible!” his lips seemed to breathe, and his clasp Fernando Torres Tröja slowly unloosed from my arm like a |
