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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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993 ‘You’ll bring your threats here, will you?’ said Gride, whom jealousy of Nicholas and a sense of his own triumph had converted into a perfect fiend. ‘You, the disappointed lover? Oh dear! He! he! he! But you shan’t have her, nor she you. She’s my wife, my doting little wife. Do you think she’ll miss you? Do you think she’ll weep? I shall like to see her weep, I shan’t mind it. She looks prettier in tears.’ ‘Villain!’ said Nicholas, choking with his rage. ‘One minute more,’ cried Arthur Gride, ‘and I’ll rouse the street with such screams, as, if they were raised by anybody else, should wake me even in the arms of pretty Madeline.’ ‘You hound!’ said Nicholas. ‘If you were but a younger man--’ ‘Oh yes!’ sneered Arthur Gride, ‘If I was but a younger man it wouldn’t be so bad; but for me, so old and ugly! To be jilted by little Madeline for me!’ ‘Hear me,’ said Nicholas, ‘and be thankful I have enough command over myself not to fling you into the street, which no aid could prevent my doing if I once grappled with you. I have been no lover of this lady’s. No contract or engagement, no word of love, has ever passed between us. She does not even know my name.’ ‘I’ll ask it for all that. I’ll beg it of her with kisses,’ said Arthur Gride. ‘Yes, and she’ll tell me, and pay them back, and we’ll laugh together, and hug ourselves, and be very merry, when we think of the poor youth that wanted to have her, but couldn’t because she was bespoke by me!’ This taunt brought such an expression into the face of Nicholas, that Arthur Gride plainly apprehended it to be the forerunner of his putting his threat of throwing him into the street in immediate execution; for he thrust his head out of the window, and holding |
