ere after what I have
said."

"I wonder you are not afraid of me," says Shadwell, who is absolutely
beside himself with anger. "Do not put unlimited faith in my
forbearance. A worm, you know, will turn. Do you think you can goad a
man to desperation and leave him as cool as when you began? I confess I
am not made of such stuff. Do you know you are in my power? What is to
prevent my killing you here, now, this moment?"

He speaks slowly, as though his breath comes with difficulty, so much
has anger overmastered him; yet her eyes have never fallen before his,
and he knows, in spite of his words, he has not the smallest mastery
over her, he has gained no triumph.

"I wish you were dead," he goes on, in a compressed tone, "and myself
too. To be sure, that if you were not mine you would never be
another's, has in it a sweetness that tempts me. They say extremes
meet. I hardly know, now, where my love for you ends, or where my
hatred begins."

His violence terrifies Molly.

"Philip, be generous," she says, laying her hand against his chest with
a vain attempt to break from him; "and--and--try to be calm. Your eyes
have madness in them. Even if you were to kill me, what good would it
do you? And think of the afterward. Oh, what have I ever done to you
that you should seek to--to--unnerve me like this?"

"'What have you done?' Shall I tell you? You have murdered me surely as
though your knife had entered my heart. You have killed every good
thought in me, every desire that might perhaps have had some element of
nobleness in it. I was bad enough before I met you, I dare say; but you
have made me ten times worse."

"It is all false. I will not listen to you,"--covering her ears with
her hands. But he takes them down again, gently but determinedly, and
compels her to hear him.

"When you first came to Herst for your own amusement, to pass away the
hours that perhaps hung a little heavily upon your hands, or to rouse a
feeling of jealousy in the heart of Luttrell, or to prove the power you
have over all men by the right of your fatal beauty, you played off
upon me all the pretty airs and graces, all the sweet looks and tender
words, that come so easy to you, never caring what torment I might have
to endure when your dainty pastime had palled upon you. Day by day I
was led to believe that I was more to you than those others who also
waited on your words."

"That is false,--false. Your own vanity misled you."

"I was th