She said then that I should find you a heartless coquette!" "Mr.Ratcliffe!" exclaimed Madeleine, rising from her chair, and speaking in a warning voice almost as passionate as his own.
"A heartless coquette!" he repeated, still more harshly than before; "she said you would do just this! that you meant to deceive me! that you lived on flattery! that you could never be anything but a coquette, and that if you married me, I should repent it all my life.

I believe her now!" Mrs.Lee's temper, too, was naturally a high one.

At this moment she, too, was flaming with anger, and wild with a passionate impulse to annihilate this man.

Conscious that the mastery was in her own hands, she could the more easily control her voice, and with an expression of unutterable contempt she spoke her last words to him, words which had been ringing all day in her ears: "Mr.Ratcliffe! I have listened to you with a great deal more patience and respect than you deserve.

For one long hour I have degraded myself by discussing with you the question whether I should marry a man who by his own confession has betrayed the highest trusts that could be placed in him, who has taken money for his votes as a Senator, and who is now in public office by means of a successful fraud of his own, when in justice he should be in a State's prison.