nt of even a pretence of public virtue;
the mere thought of his touch on her person was more repulsive than
a loathsome disease. Bent upon teaching him a lesson he would never
forget, she spoke out abruptly, and with evident signs of contempt in
her voice and manner:

"Mr. Ratcliffe, I am not to be bought. No rank, no dignity, no
consideration, no conceivable expedient would induce me to change my
mind. Let us have no more of this!"

Ratcliffe had already been more than once, during this conversation, on
the verge of losing his temper. Naturally dictatorial and violent, only
long training and severe experience had taught him self-control, and
when he gave way to passion his bursts of fury were still tremendous.
Mrs. Lee's evident personal disgust, even more than her last sharp
rebuke, passed the bounds of his patience. As he stood before her, even
she, high-spirited as she was, and not in a calm frame of mind, felt a
momentary shock at seeing how his face flushed, his eyes gleamed, and
his hands trembled with rage.

"Ah!" exclaimed he, turning upon her with a harshness, almost a
savageness, of manner that startled her still more; "I might have known
what to expect! Mrs. Clinton warned me early. She said then that I
should find you a heartless coquette!"

"Mr. Ratcliffe!" exclaimed Madeleine, rising from her chair, and
speaking in a warning voice almost as passionate as his own.

"A heartless coquette!" he repeated, still more harshly than before;
"she said you would do just this! that you meant to deceive me! that you
lived on flattery! that you could never be anything but a coquette, and
that if you married me, I should repent it all my life. I believe her
now!"

Mrs. Lee's temper, too, was naturally a high one. At this moment she,
too, was flaming with anger, and wild with a passionate impulse to
annihilate this man. Conscious that the mastery was in her own hands,
she could the more easily control her voice, and with an expression of
unutterable contempt she spoke her last words to him, words which had
been ringing all day in her ears:

"Mr. Ratcliffe! I have listened to you with a great deal more patience
and respect than you deserve. For one long hour I have degraded myself
by discussing with you the question whether I should marry a man who by
his own confession has betrayed the highest trusts that could be placed
in him, who has taken money for his votes as a Senator, and who is now
in public office by m