"What!" and in an instant she had left her position against the mantelpiece, and was leaning over the table at the corner where he sat, her face close to his, her eyes on his eyes, her hot breath on his cheeks--"You dare to talk of killing him, of doing him the slightest injury! You dare to lift your hand against my Lionel! Look here, Geoffrey Ludlow: you have been good and kind and generous to me,--have loved me, in your fashion--deeply, I know; and I would let us part friends; but I swear that if you attempt to wreak your vengeance on Lionel Brakespere, who has done you no harm--how has he injured you?--I will be revenged on you in a manner of which you little dream, but which shall break your heart and spirit, and humble your pride to the dust. Think of all this, Geoffrey Ludlow--think of it. Do nothing rashly, take no step that will madden me, and drive me to do something that will prevent your ever thinking of me with regret, when I am far away." There was a softness in her voice which touched a chord in Geoffrey Ludlow's breast. The fire faded out of his eyes; his hands, which had been tight-clenched, relaxed, and spread out before him in entreaty; he looked up at Margaret through blinding tears, and in a broken voice said, "When you are far away! O, my darling, my darling, you are not going to leave me? It cannot be,--it is some horrible dream. To leave me, who live but for you, whose existence is bound up in yours! It cannot be. What have I done?--what can you charge me with? Want of affection, of devotion to you? O God, it is hard that I should have to suffer in this way! But you won't go, Margaret darling? Tell me that--only tell me that." She shrank farther away from him, and seemed for a moment to cower before the vehemence and anguish of his appeal; but the next her face darkened and hardened, and as she answered him, the passion in her voice was dashed with a tone of contempt. "Yes, I will leave you," she said,--"of course I will leave you. Do you not hear me? Do you not understand me? I have seen him, I tell you, and every thing which is not him has faded out of my life. What should I do here, or any where, where he is not? The mere idea is absurd. I have only half lived since I lost him, and I could not live at all now that I have seen him again. Stay here! not leave _you!_ stay _here!_" She looked round the room with a glance of aversion and avoidance, and went on with increasing rapidity: "You have never understood me. How should you? But the time has come now when you must try to understand me, for your own sake; for mine it does no matter--nothing matters now." She was standing within arm's-length of him, and her face was turned full upon him: but she did not seem to see him. She went on as though reckoning with herself, and Geoffrey gazed upon her in stupefied amazement; his momentary rage quenched in the bewilderment of his anguish.