"How are you now, Jane?"
"Much better, sir; I shall be well soon."
"Taste the wine again, Jane."
I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me,
and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an
inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind;
he walked fast through the room and came back; he stooped towards me
as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I
turned my face away and put his aside.
"What!--How is this?" he exclaimed hastily. "Oh, I know! you won't
kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and
my embraces appropriated?"
"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir."
"Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will
answer for you--Because I have a wife already, you would reply.--I
guess rightly?"
"Yes."
"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must
regard me as a plotting profligate--a base and low rake who has been
simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare
deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-
respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing in the
first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your
breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to
accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are
opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no
desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are
thinking how TO ACT--TALKING you consider is of no use. I know you-
-I am on my guard."
"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said; and my unsteady
voice warned me to curtail my sentence.
"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to
destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man--as a
married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have
refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger
to me: to live under this roof only as Adele's governess; if ever I
say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you
again to me, you will say,--'That man had nearly made me his
mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;' and ice and rock you will
accordingly become."