The Frozen Deep | Page 9

the chair--shrank, as if she was frightened of him.
"Clara, you have not even shaken hands with me! What does it mean?"
He paused; waiting and watching her. She made no reply. A flash of the quick temper in him leaped up in his eyes. He repeated his last words in louder and sterner tones:
"What does it mean?"
She replied this time. His tone had hurt her--his tone had roused her sinking courage.
"It means, Mr. Wardour, that you have been mistaken from the first."
"How have I been mistaken?"
"You have been under a wrong impression, and you have given me no opportunity of setting you right."
"In what way have I been wrong?"
"You have been too hasty and too confident about yourself and about me. You have entirely misunderstood me. I am grieved to distress you, but for your sake I must speak plainly. I am your friend always, Mr. Wardour. I can never be your wife."
He mechanically repeated the last words. He seemed to doubt whether he had heard her aright.
"You can never be my wife?"
"Never!"
"Why?"
There was no answer. She was incapable of telling him a falsehood. She was ashamed to tell him the truth.
He stooped over her, and suddenly possessed himself of her hand. Holding her hand firmly, he stooped a little lower; searching for the signs which might answer him in her face. His own face darkened slowly while he looked. He was beginning to suspect her; and he acknowledged it in his next words.
"Something has changed you toward me, Clara. Somebody has influenced you against me. Is it--you force me to ask the question--is it some other man?"
"You have no right to ask me that."
He went on without noticing what she had said to him.
"Has that other man come between you and me? I speak plainly on my side. Speak plainly on yours."
"I have spoken. I have nothing more to say."
There was a pause. She saw the warning light which told of the fire within him, growing brighter and brighter in his eyes. She felt his grasp strengthening on her hand. He appealed to her for the last time.
"Reflect," he said, "reflect before it is too late. Your silence will not serve you. If you persist in not answering me, I shall take your silence as a confession. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Clara Burnham! I am not to be trifled with. Clara Burnham! I insist on the truth. Are you false to me?"
She resented that searching question with a woman's keen sense of the insult that is implied in doubting her to her face.
"Mr. Wardour! you forget yourself when you call me to account in that way. I never encouraged you. I never gave you promise or pledge--"
He passionately interrupted her before she could say more.
"You have engaged yourself in my absence. Your words own it; your looks own it! You have engaged yourself to another man!"
"If I have engaged myself, what right have you to complain of it?" she answered firmly. "What right have you to control my actions--?"
The next words died away on her lips. He suddenly dropped her hand. A marked change appeared in the expression of his eyes--a change which told her of the terrible passions that she had let loose in him. She read, dimly read, something in his face which made her tremble--not for herself, but for Frank.
Little by little the dark color faded out of his face. His deep voice dropped suddenly to a low and quiet tone as he spoke the parting words.
"Say no more, Miss Burnham--you have said enough. I am answered; I am dismissed." He paused, and, stepping close up to her, laid his hand on her arm.
"The time may come," he said, "when I shall forgive you. But the man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met."
He turned and left her.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Crayford, entering the conservatory, was met by one of the attendants at the ball. The man stopped as if he wished to speak to her.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Do you happen to have a smelling-bottle about you? There is a young lady in the conservatory who is taken faint."
Between the Scenes
The Landing Stage
Chapter 5.
The morning of the next day--the morning on which the ships were to sail--came bright and breezy. Mrs. Crayford, having arranged to follow her husband to the water-side, and see the last of him before he embarked, entered Clara's room on her way out of the house, anxious to hear how her young friend passed the night. To her astonishment she found Clara had risen, and was dressed, like herself, to go out.
"What does this mean, my dear? After what you suffered last night--after the shock of seeing that man--why don't you take my advice and