The Haunted Chamber

"You know it was"--reproachfully.

"I know nothing of the kind"--hotly. "I only know that I have always loved you and only you, and that I shall never love another."

"You forget--Dora Talbot!" says Florence, in a very low tone. "I think, Sir Adrian, your late coldness to her has been neither kind nor just."

"I have never been either colder or warmer to Dora Talbot than I have been to any other ordinary acquaintance of mine," returns Sir Adrian, with considerable excitement. "There is surely a terrible mistake somewhere."

"Do you mean to tell me," says Florence, rising in her agitation, "that you never spoke of love to Dora?"

"Certainly I spoke of love--of my love for you," he declares vehemently. "That you should suppose I ever felt anything for Mrs. Talbot but the most ordinary friendship seems incredible to me. To you, and you alone, my heart has been given for many a day. Not the vaguest tenderness for any other woman has come between my thoughts and your image since first we met."

"Yet there was your love-letter to her--I read it with my own eyes!" declares Florence faintly.

"I never wrote Mrs. Talbot a line in my life," says Sir Adrian, more and more puzzled.

"You will tell me next I did not see you kissing her hand in the lime-walk last September?" pursues Florence, flushing hotly with shame and indignation.

"You did not," he declares vehemently. "I swear it. Of what else are you going to accuse me? I never wrote to her, and I never kissed her hand."

"It is better for us to discuss this matter no longer," says Miss Delmaine, rising from her seat. "And for the future I can not--will not--read to you here in the morning. Let us make an end of this false friendship now at once and forever."

She moves toward the door as she speaks, but he, closely following, overtakes her, and, putting his back against the door, so bars her egress.

He has been forbidden exertion of any kind, and now this unusual excitement has brought a color to his wan cheeks and a brilliancy to his eyes. Both these changes in his appearance however only serve to betray the actual weakness to which, ever since his cruel imprisonment, he has been a victim.

Miss Delmaine's heart smites her. She would have reasoned with him, and entreated him to go back again to his lounge, but he interrupts her.