"Who dares impugn it? Who
dares meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this
persecution?"
"I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear
or to speak," Laura said. "But as for mamma, if she had acted
otherwise than she did with regard to--to the person about whom you
seem to take such an interest, it would have been I that must have
quitted your house, and not that--that person."
"By heavens! this is too much," Pen cried out, with a violent
execration.
"Perhaps that is what you wished," Laura said, tossing her head up.
"No more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such
subjects spoken of in such language;" and with a stately courtesy the
young lady passed to her friend's room, looking her adversary full in
the face as she retreated and closed the door upon him.
Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous
and unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter
laugh as Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man
who jeers under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his
persecutor's anger.
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