‘Yes, his wife! How can I be _more_ his wife than I am? I love him--he loves me! We are essentially _one_ in heart and word and deed. What could a marriage ceremony have done more for us, than our mutual love has done. And then _you_, who know all this, who have known us so many years, you dare to come here and insult me, in my own house, and under the pretence of friendship deal the deadliest insult you could possibly have hurled at my head! Oh, how I wish Ilfracombe had been at home to protect me from your insolence! He would not have let you finish your cowardly sentence! You would not have dared utter it had he been standing by! He would have taken you by the collar and spurned you from the door. I have no words in which to tell you how I despise you; how low and mean a thing you seem to me; how I wish I were a man that I might put you out of this room and this house myself! But rest assured that Lord Ilfracombe shall hear of your baseness, and will punish you as you deserve!’ Jack Portland still kept his glass fixed in his eye and stared insolently at her. He had elevated his brows once or twice as she proceeded with her speech, and shrugged his shoulders, as if she were not worth a second thought of his; and as she mentioned her lover’s name he smiled scornfully and waved his hand. ‘Pray don’t take it in this fashion,’ he said, as she concluded. ‘I am sure Ilfracombe would tell you it was not worth making such a fuss about. As for insulting you, that is the last idea in my mind. I admire you far too much. Most ladies would, I flatter myself, have regarded my offer in a totally different light; indeed, no reasonable person could say that it was an insult, especially from a man of my birth and position.’ ‘It becomes an insult,’ she answered hotly, ‘when you address your proposals to the wife of another man, and that man your greatest friend.’ ‘Perhaps it would, if she _were_ his wife, or ever likely to be so,’ returned Mr Portland, with a sneer. ‘But I _am_, I _am_,’ cried Nell passionately, stamping her feet, ‘and each fresh word you say is a fresh affront. People with your low conceptions of life cannot understand the strength of the tie between Ilfracombe and myself, because it has not been ratified by the law. You are not honourable enough to see that that very fact renders it still more binding on a man of honour. Ilfracombe would die sooner than part from me, and I would die a thousand deaths sooner than part from him. Our lives are bound up in each other. And even if it were not so, I could never exchange him for you. Now, do you understand, or must I say it all over again?’ Under the sting of what his proposal had suggested to her, she was blazing away at him with twice her natural ferocity. At that moment she hated him with such a deadly hatred for having presumed to remind her of the real position she held, that she could gladly have killed him.