'

'Stop! I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place
once more. It will give you a minute's time to think, and me a minute's
time to get some fortitude together.'

Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same
place, and again he worked at the stone.

'Is it,' he said, with his attention apparently engrossed by it, 'yes,
or no?'

'Mr Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope
you may find a worthy wife before long and be very happy. But it is no.'

'Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?' he asked,
in the same half-suffocated way.

'None whatever.'

'Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my
favour?'

'I am quite decided, Mr Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain
there is none.'

'Then,' said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and
bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid
the knuckles raw and bleeding; 'then I hope that I may never kill him!'

The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his
livid lips, and with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as
if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow, made her so
afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he caught her by the arm.

'Mr Headstone, let me go. Mr Headstone, I must call for help!'

'It is I who should call for help,' he said; 'you don't know yet how
much I need it.'

The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her
brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in
another instant; but all at once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as
if Death itself had done so.

'There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.'

With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-reliant
life and her right to be free from accountability to this man, she
released her arm from his grasp and stood looking full at him. She had
never been so handsome, in his eyes. A shade came over them while
he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out of them to
herself.

'This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,' he went on, folding
his hands before him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any
impetuous gesture; 'this last time at least I will not be tortured with
after-thoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'

'Was it of him you spoke in your ungovernable rage and v