feel old
and body-worn, and all the more senselessly furious.

"I believe you hate me," he raged. "And I may thank my wife for that."
Then he lost himself entirely. "Why cannot you behave well to me? If you
will behave well to me, Rosalie shall go her own way. If you even
looked at me as you look at other men--but you do not. There is always
something under your lashes which watches me as if I were a wild beast
you were studying. Don't fancy yourself a dompteuse. I am not your man.
I swear to you that you don't know what you are dealing with. I swear
to you that if you play this game with me I will drag you two down if I
drag myself with you. I have nothing much to lose. You and your sister
have everything."

"Go on," Betty said briefly.

"Go on! Yes, I will go on. Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold in the hollow
of my hand. As for you--do you know that people are beginning to discuss
you? Gossip is easily stirred in the country, where people are so bored
that they chatter in self-defence. I have been considered a bad lot. I
have become curiously attached to my sister-in-law. I am seen hanging
about her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together. An
American young woman is not like an English girl--she is used to seeing
the marriage ceremony juggled with. There's a trifle of prejudice
against such young women when they are too rich and too handsome. Don't
look at me like that!" he burst forth, with maddened sharpness, "I won't
have it!"

The girl was regarding him with the expression he most resented--the
reflection of a normal person watching an abnormal one, and studying his
abnormality.

"Do you know that you are raving?" she said, with quiet
curiosity--"raving?"

Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he touched his
forehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his hand actually shook.

"Yes," he answered, panting, "but 'ware my ravings! They mean what they
say."

"You do yourself an injury when you give way to them"--steadily, even
with a touch of slow significance--"a physical injury. I have noticed
that more than once."

He sprang to his feet again. Every drop of blood left his face. For
a second he looked as if he would strike her. His arm actually flung
itself out--and fell.

"You devil!" he gasped. "You count on that? You she-devil!"

She left her tree and stood before him.

"Listen to me," she said. "You intimate that you have been laying
melodramatic plots against me which