Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/218

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208
VIVIAN GREY.

"Oh! speak, speak! compensate for all you have done, by your present frankness;—be brief— be brief."

"I will be brief," shouted Vivian, with terrific earnestness; "I will be brief. Know then. Madam, that in order to prevent the intercourse between you and Mr. Cleveland from proceeding, I obtained his friendship, and became the confidant of his heart's sweetest secret. Thus situated, I suppressed the letters, with which I was entrusted from him to you, and poisoning his mind, I accounted for your silence, by your being employed in other correspondence; nay, I did more, with the malice of a fiend, I boasted of——nay, do not stop me; I have more to tell."

Mrs. Felix Lorraine, with compressed lips, and looks of horrible earnestness, gazed in silence.

"The result of all this you know,—but the most terrible part is to come; and, by a strange