" 'You may depend,' I answered, 'on my doing exactly what you order me to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the extraordinary directions you have just given to me?'
"His, face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my dressing-table, with a heavy, hopeless sigh.
" 'You may know the reason,' he said, 'if you wish it.' He waited a little, and considered. 'You have a right to know the reason,'
he resumed, 'for you yourself are concerned in it.' He waited a little again, and again went on. 'I can only explain the strange request I have just made to you in one way,' be said. 'I must ask you to recall what happened in the next room, before Allan left us to-night.'
"He looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions in his face. At one moment I thought he felt pity for me. At another, it seemed more like horror of me. I began to feel frightened again;I waited for his next words in silence.
" 'I know that I have been working too hard lately,' he went on, 'and that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted, or distorted, the circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favor if you will test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false anywhere, I entreat you to stop me, and tell me of it.'
"I commanded myself sufficiently to ask what the circumstances were to which he referred, and in what way I was personally concerned in them.
" 'You were personally concerned in them in this way,' he answered. 'The circumstances to which I refer began with your speaking to Allan about Miss Milroy, in what I thought a very inconsiderate and very impatient manner. I am afraid I spoke just as petulantly on my side, and I beg your pardon for what I said to you in the irritation of the moment. You left the room. After a short absence, you came back again, and made a perfectly proper apology to Allan, which he received with his usual kindness and sweetness of temper. While this went on, you and he were both standing by the supper-table; and Allan resumed some conversation which had already passed between you about the Neapolitan wine.
He said he thought he should learn to like it in time, and he asked leave to take another glass of the wine we had on the table. Am I right so far?'
"The words almost died on my lips; but I forced them out, and answered him that he was right so far.
" 'You took the flask out of Allan's hand,' he proceeded. 'You said to him, good-humoredly, "You know you don't really like the wine, Mr. Armadale. Let me make you something which may be more to your taste. I have a recipe of my own for lemonade. Will you favor me by trying it?" In those words, you made your proposal to him, and he accepted it. Did he also ask leave to look on, and learn how the lemonade was made? and did you tell him that he would only confuse you, and that you would give him the recipe in writing, if he wanted it?'
"This time the words did really die on my lips. I could only bow my head, and answer 'Yes' mutely in that way. Midwinter went on.
" 'Allan laughed, and went to the window to look out at the Bay, and I went with him. After a while Allan remarked, jocosely, that the mere sound of the liquids you were pouring out made him thirsty. When he said this, I turned round from the window. Iapproached you, and said the lemonade took a long time to make.
You touched me, as I was walking away again, and handed me the tumbler filled to the brim. At the same time, Allan turned round from the window; and I, in my turn, handed the tumbler to _him._--Is there any mistake so far?'
"The quick throbbing of my heart almost choked me. I could just shake my head--I could do no more.
" 'I saw Allan raise the tumbler to his lips.--Did _you_ see it?
I saw his face turn white in an instant.--Did _you?_ I saw the glass fall from his hand on the floor. I saw him stagger, and caught him before he fell. Are these things true? For God's sake, search your memory, and tell me--are these things true?'
"The throbbing at my heart seemed, for one breathless instant, to stop. The next moment something fiery, something maddening, flew through me. I started to my feet, with my temper in a flame, reckless of all consequences, desperate enough to say anything.
" 'Your questions are an insult! Your looks are an insult!' Iburst out. '_Do you think I tried to poison him?_'
"The words rushed out of my lips in spite of me. They were the last words under heaven that any woman, in such a situation as mine, ought to have spoken. And yet I spoke them!
"He rose in alarm and gave me my smelling-bottle. 'Hush! hush!'
he said. 'You, too, are overwrought--you, too, are overexcited by all that has happened to-night. You are talking wildly and shockingly. Good God! how can you have so utterly misunderstood me? Compose yourself--pray, compose yourself.'
"He might as well have told a wild animal to compose herself.
Having been mad enough to say the words, I was mad enough next to return to the subject of the lemonade, in spite of his entreaties to me to be silent.
" 'I told you what I had put in the glass, the moment Mr.
Armadale fainted,' I went on; insisting furiously on defending myself, when no attack was made on me. 'I told you I had taken the flask of brandy which you kept at your bedside, and mixed some of it with the lemonade. How could I know that he had a nervous horror of the smell and taste of brandy? Didn't he say to me himself, when he came to his senses, It's my fault; I ought to have warned you to put no brandy in it? Didn't he remind you afterward of the time when you and he were in the Isle of Man together, and when the doctor there innocently made the same mistake with him that I made to-night?'
["I laid a great stress on my innocence--and with some reason too. Whatever else I may be, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. I _was_ innocent--so far as the brandy was concerned.
I had put it into the lemonade, in pure ignorance of Armadale's nervous peculiarity, to disguise the taste of--never mind what!
