‘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.
It was but little sleep I got that night, and in the morning I rose perple
