purple veins stood out
darkly upon his pale forehead, his eyes had a haggard look; he was like
a man consumed inwardly by some evil passion that was stronger than
himself, like a man possessed by devils. Vixen looked at him with
wonder. They stood facing each other, with the lamplit table between
them, the light shining on both their faces.

"Why do you look at me with that provoking smile?" he asked. "Do you
want to exasperate me? You must know that I hate you."

"I do," answered Vixen; "but God only knows why you should do so."

"Do you know no reason?"

"No."

"Can't you guess one?"

"No; unless it is because my father's fortune will belong to me
by-and-by, if I live to be five-and-twenty, and your position here will
be lessened."

"That is not the reason; no, I am not so base as that. That its not why
I hate you, Violet. If you had been some dumpy, homely, country lass,
with thick features and a clumsy figure, you and I might have got on
decently enough. I would have made you obey me; but I would have been
kind to you. But you are something very different. You are the girl I
would have perilled my soul to win--the girl who rejected me with
careless scorn. Have you forgotten that night in the Pavilion Garden at
Brighton? I have not. I never look up at the stars without remembering
it; and I can never forgive you while that memory lives in my mind. If
you had been my wife, Violet, I would have been your slave. You forced
me to make myself your stepfather; and I will be master instead of
slave. I will make your life bitter to you if you thwart me. I will put
a stop to your running after another woman's sweetheart. I will come
between you and your lover, Roderick Vawdrey. Your secret meetings,
your clandestine love-making, shall be stopped. Such conduct as you
have been carrying on of late is a shame and disgrace to your sex."

"How dare you say that?" cried Vixen, beside herself with anger.

She grasped the lamp with both her hands, as if she would have hurled
it at her foe. It was a large moon-shaped globe upon a bronze
pedestal--a fearful thing to fling at one's adversary. A great wave of
blood surged up into the girl's brain. What she was going to do she
knew not; but her whole being was convulsed by the passion of that
moment. The room reeled before her eyes, the heavy pedestal swayed in
her hands, and then she saw the big moonlike globe roll on to the
carpet, and after it, and darting beyond it, a stre