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
means of a successful fraud of his own, when in justice he should
be in a State's prison.
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