RODERICK HUDSON
sounded in his ears the sinister click as of a fitting together of bad pieces. She had been too plausible to be honest. Without being able to trace the connection, he yet instinctively associated her present rebellion with her meeting of Mary. Sinister it thus suddenly showed, her exhibition of eager mildness at Madame Grandoni's, and all the uneasiness she had then stirred in him came back with a chill. Yes, it was clearer than it was obscure, and he recognised in the stroke now startling him the hand armed to deal some blow at Miss Garland's small remnant of security. So it hung before him, portentous and ugly. If she had not seen Mary she would have let things stand, but she had seen her and she had acted. It was monstrous indeed to suppose that she could have sacrificed so brilliant a fortune to a mere movement of jealousy, to a calculation of quite futile effects, to a desire to create for the poor girl some poisonous alarm. Yet he remembered his first impression of her; she was "dangerous," and she had measured in each quarter the penetration of her announced rupture. She hovered there for him as tasting that strength in it. If the question had been of her penetrating, he, verily, was penetrated, and it made him long, for a minute that was as sharp as a knife-edge, to denounce her to her face. But of course all he could say to his visitor was that he was extremely sorry, though indeed he was not surprised.
"You 're not surprised?"
"With Miss Light everything's possible. Isn't that true?"
Another ripple seemed to play an instant in the
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