"Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?""Yes."
"Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of the play we saw together at Rome? Is the story as present to your mind now, as it was then?""Quite as present."
"You asked if I was performing the part of the Marquis--and if you were the Count. Rothsay! the devotion of that ideal character to his friend has been my devotion; his conviction that his death would justify what he had done for his friend's sake, has been _my_ conviction; and as it ended with him, so it has ended with me--his terrible position is _my_ terrible position toward you, at this moment.""Are you mad?" Rothsay asked, sternly.
I passed over that first outbreak of his anger in silence.
"Do you mean to tell me you have married Susan?" he went on.
"Bear this in mind," I said. "When I married her, I was doomed to death. Nay, more. In your interests--as God is my witness--Iwelcomed death."
He stepped up to me, in silence, and raised his hand with a threatening gesture.
That action at once deprived me of my self-possession. I spoke with the ungovernable rashness of a boy.
