"Yes, I hate him with all my heart and soul, and I wish to heaven I had him here, like this rat, to trample to death under my feet!" Not knowing very well what reply to make to this strong and heartfelt speech, which rather shocked his notions of female propriety, Sir Norman stood silent, and looked reflectively after the rat, which, when she permitted it at last to go free, limped away with an ineffably sneaking and crest-fallen expression on his hitherto animated features.

She watched it, too, with a gloomy eye, and when it crawled into the darkness and was gone, she looked up with a face so dark and moody that it was almost sullen.
"Yes, I hate him!" she repeated, with a fierce moodiness that was quite dreadful, "yes, I hate him! and I would kill him, like that rat, if I could! He has been the curse of my whole life; he has made life cursed to me; and his heart's blood shall be shed for it some day yet, I swear!" With all her beauty there was something so horrible in the look she wore, that Sir Norman involuntarily recoiled from her.

Her sharp eyes noticed it, and both grew red and fiery as two devouring flames.
"Ah! you, too, shrink from me, would you?
You, too, recoil in horror! Ingrate! And I have come to save your life!" "Madame, I recoil not from you, but from that which is tempting you to utter words like these.

I have no reason to love him of whom you speak--you, perhaps, have even less; but I would not have his blood, shed in murder, on my head, for ten thousand worlds! Pardon me, but you do not mean what you say." "Do I not?
That remains to be seen! I would not call it murder plunging a knife into the heart of a demon incarnate like that, and I would have done it long ago and he knows it, too, if I had the chance!" "What has he done to you to make you do bitter against him ?" "Bitter! Oh, that word is poor and pitiful to express what I feel when his name is mentioned.

Loathing and hatred come a little nearer the mark, but even they are weak to express the utter--the--" She stopped in a sort of white passion that choked her very words.
"They told me he was your husband," insinuated Sir Norman, unutterably repelled.
"Did they ?" she said, with a cold sneer, "he is, too--at least as far as church and state can make him; but I am no more his wife at heart than I am Satan's.