In that sense I can understand you, sir.
The description is too true to be mistaken.”
“Be it so!” he replied, turning livid with rage, though still keeping himself under a certain restraint. “Well; since you think me so worthless, it won’t, I suppose, better your opinion of me, when I tell you what I’m going to do with you?”
“Do with me!
You are presumptuous, cousin Cash!
You talk as if I were your protegee, or slave!
I’m neither one, nor the other!”
Calhoun, cowering under the outburst of her indignation, remained silent.
“Pardieu!” she continued, “what is this threat? Tell me what you are going to do with me!
I should like to know that.” “You shall.”
“Let me hear it!
Am I to be turned adrift upon the prairie, or shut up in a convent?
Perhaps it may be a prison?”
“You would like the last, no doubt—provided your incarceration was to be in the company of—”
“Go on, sir! What is to be my destiny?
I’m impatient to have it declared.”
“Don’t be in a hurry.
The first act shall be rehearsed tomorrow.”
“So soon?
And where, may I ask?”
“In a court of justice.”
“How, sir?”
“By your standing before a judge, and in presence of a jury.”
“You are pleased to be facetious, Captain Calhoun. Let me tell you that I don’t like such pleasantries—”
“Pleasantries indeed!
I’m stating plain facts.
To-morrow is the day of trial.
Mr Maurice Gerald, or McSweeney, or O’Hogerty, or whatever’s his name, will stand before the bar—accused of murdering your brother.”
“’Tis false!
Maurice Gerald never—”
“Did the deed, you are going to say?
Well, that remains to be proved.
It will be; and from your own lips will come the words that’ll prove it—to the satisfaction of every man upon the jury.”
The great gazelle-eyes of the Creole were opened to their fullest extent. They gazed upon the speaker with a look such as is oft given by the gazelle itself—a commingling of fear, wonder, and inquiry.
It was some seconds before she essayed to speak.
Thoughts, conjectures, fears, fancies, and suspicions, all had to do in keeping her silent.
“I know not what you mean,” she at length rejoined. “You talk of my being called into court.
For what purpose?
Though I am the sister of him, who—I know nothing—can tell no more than is in the mouth of everybody.”
“Yes can you; a great deal more.
It’s not in the mouth of everybody: that on the night of the murder, you gave Gerald a meeting at the bottom of the garden.
No more does all the world know what occurred at that stolen interview.
How Henry intruded upon it; how, maddened, as he might well be, by the thought of such a disgrace—not only to his sister, but his family—he threatened to kill the man who had caused it; and was only hindered from carrying out that threat, by the intercession of the woman so damnably deluded!
“All the world don’t know what followed: how Henry, like a fool, went after the low hound, and with what intent.
Besides themselves, there were but two others who chanced to be spectators of that parting.”
“Two—who were they?”
The question was asked mechanically—almost with a tranquil coolness.
It was answered with equal sang froid.
“One was Cassius Calhoun—the other Louise Poindexter.”
She did not start.