Henry brought me some flowers which I had left in the dining-room, and said to me in a low voice, "For Heaven's sake don't look so miserable! Exert yourself; this will never do." There are sometimes particular phrases which try one, and jar upon one's feelings; and this last was of that number. I darted upon Henry a look of angry reproach, and said in a hurried manner, "_It will never do_ to be goaded in this way! I cannot answer for what I may say if you stay here. Your presence and your advice are insults which drive me mad, and if you do not go, I feel that I shall lose my head." As I spoke, I tore the flowers in my hand into pieces, which I flung one by one into the fire. "Have mercy upon your bouquet, Mrs. Middleton! You are beheading those beautiful camellias in the most cruel manner," exclaimed Sir Edmund. "The organ of destructiveness must be strong in you, fair lady," observed Mr. Escourt, with one of his blandest smiles. Again an icy chill ran through me; but I hated this man so intensely, that not even terror could subdue me: and when Sir Edmund asked me if I had courage to kill an insect, I answered--"There are insects so loathsome and contemptible, that to crush them is a pleasure." I felt that I was making an odious speech; I saw in Edward's face an expression almost of disgust. I felt that I was sinking every moment in his opinion; perhaps, losing ground in his affections. I felt that this was the work of those men who, one under the cover of a devoted attachment, the other of playful gallantry, were ruining and exposing me. A spirit of reckless defiance took possession of me, and I completely lost my head. A torrent of words burst from my lips, of which I hardly knew the meaning, as I uttered them. I said there were crimes worse than murder. I said that to torture was worse than to kill: to make life a curse worse than to take it away. I pointed to the insect that was crawling on the table, and asked if it would not be mercy to kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in their tongues, whose language is refined, and whose thoughts are devilish. Strange and terrible words they were which I spoke in that hour; there was eloquence and power in them, for what is so eloquent as the pent-up agony of years, when at last it finds a vent? What is so powerful as the outpouring of the soul, when it breaks down the barriers it has long respected?