The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

He was going to leave the room; but she threw herself in his way, crossed her arms, and said to him in an imperative tone,—

“You have gone too far, sir, to retrace your steps. You are bound now to justify your insidious insinuations, or, to confess that they were false.”

Then he seemed to make up his mind, and said, speaking rapidly,—

“You will have it so? Well, be it so. Know, then, since you insist upon it, that M. Daniel Champcey has been deceiving you most wickedly; that he does not love you, and probably never did love you.”

“That is what you say,” replied Henrietta.

Her haughty carriage, the disdain, rather than disgust, with which she spoke, could not fail to exasperate M. Elgin. He checked himself, however, and said, in a short and cutting tone,—

“I say so because it is so; and any one but you, possessing a less noble ignorance of evil, would long since have discovered the truth. To what do you attribute Sarah’s implacable enmity? To the memory of your offences on the occasion of her wedding? Poor child! If that had been all, her indifference would have given you back your place months ago. Jealousy alone is capable of that fierce and insatiable hatred which cannot be disarmed by tears or submission,—that hatred which time increases, instead of diminishing. Between Sarah and you, Miss Henrietta, there stands a man.”

“A man?”

“Yes,—M. Daniel Champcey.”

Henrietta felt as if a sharp knife had been plunged into her bosom.

“I do not understand you, sir,” she said.

He, shrugging his shoulders, and assuming an air of commiseration, went on,—

“What? You will not understand that Sarah is your rival; that she has loved M. Champcey; that she is still madly in love with him? Ah! they have deceived Mrs. Brian and myself cruelly.”

“How so?”

He turned his head aside, and murmured, as if speaking to himself,—

“———— ———— was her lover.”

Miss Ville-Handry discerned the truth with admirable instinct, drew herself up, and said in her most energetic way,—

“That is false!”

Sir Thorn trembled; but that was all.

“You have asked me to tell the truth,” he said coldly, “and I have done so. Try to remember. Have you forgotten that little scene, after which M. Champcey fled from our house in the middle of the night, bareheaded, without taking his overcoat?”

“Sir?”

“Did you not think that was extraordinary? That night, you see, we discovered the whole thing. After having been one of the foremost to recommend to Sarah to marry your father, M. Champcey came and asked her to give up that marriage. He had, before that, tried to have it broken off through your agency, madam, using thus his influence over you, his betrothed, for the benefit of his passion.”

“Ah! You lie impudently, sir!” said Henrietta.

To this charge, which fell like a blow upon his face, he only replied,—

“I have proofs.”

“What proofs?”

“Letters written by M. Champcey to Sarah. I have obtained two; and I have them here in my pocket-book.”

He put at the same time his hand to his pocket. She stopped him.

“These letters would prove nothing to me, sir.”

“But”—

She cast a withering glance at him, and said, in a voice of unbearable contempt,—

“Those who have sent a letter to the Navy Department, which pretended to have been written by Daniel, cannot find any difficulty in imitating his signature. Let us break off here, sir. I forbid you ever to speak to me again.”

M. Elgin laughed in a terrible way.

“That is your last word?” he asked.

Instead of answering him, she drew a step aside, thus opening the way to the door, at which she pointed with her finger.

“Well,” said Sir Thorn with an accent of fierce threatening, “remember this; I have sworn you shall be my wife, whether you will or not; and my wife you shall be!”

“Leave the room, sir, or I must give it up to you!”

He went out swearing; and, more dead than alive, Henrietta sank into an arm-chair. As long as she had been in the presence of the enemy, her pride had enabled her to keep up the appearance of absolute faith in Daniel; but, now she was alone, terrible doubts began to beset her. Was there not something true in the evident exaggerations of the Hon. M. Elgin? She was not quite sure. Had not Sarah also boasted of it, that she loved Daniel, and that she had been in his room? Finally, Henrietta recalled with a shudder, that, when Daniel had told her of his adventure in Circus Street, he had appeared embarrassed towards the end, and had failed fully to explain the reasons of his flight.

And to crown the matter, when she had tried to draw from M. de Brevan additional information on the subject, she had been struck by his embarrassment, and the lame and confused way in which he had defended his friend.

“Ah, now all is really over!” she thought. “The measure of my sufferings is full indeed!”

Unfortunately it was not yet full. A new persecution awaited her, infamous, monstrous, by the side of which all the others amounted to nothing.

“Whether you will, or not, you shall be mine,” had Sir Thorn said; and from that moment he was bent upon convincing her that he was not the man to shrink from any thing, even unto violence.

He was no longer the sympathetic defender of former days, nor the timid lover, nor the sighing, rejected lover, who followed Henrietta everywhere. He was, henceforth, a kind of wild beast, pursuing her, harassing her, persecuting her, with his eyes glaring at her with abominable lust. He no longer looked at her furtively, as formerly; but he lay in wait for her in the passages, ready, apparently, to throw himself upon her; projecting his lips as if to touch her cheeks, and extending his arms as if to seize her around her waist. A drunken lackey pursuing a scullion would not have looked and acted more impudently.

Terrified, the poor girl threw herself on her knees before her father, beseeching him to protect her. But he pushed her back, and reproached her for slandering the most honorable and most inoffensive of men. Blindness could go no farther.

And Sir Thorn knew probably of her failure; for the next day he looked at