“I dare not—oh, my child! I will wake father.”
“I command thee to go—this moment.”
Then, almost in a passion, Margaret went. The office of mercy had been forced upon her. She had not been permitted to consider her own or her child’s interest. No one had thought of her feelings in the matter. When she reached Jan’s side she was still indignant at the peremptory way in which she had been treated.
He felt her there, rather than saw her—“Margaret!” he said feebly, “Margaret! At last!”
“Yes,” she answered in bitter anger, “at last. Hast thou called me to see thy shameful end? A name full of disgrace thou leaves to me and to thy son.”
“Forgive me—I am sorry. Forgive!”
“I will not forgive thee. No woman injured as I have been, can forgive.”
His helplessness did not touch her. Her own wrongs and the wrongs of her child filled her 130 heart. She was determined that at this hour he should at least understand their full enormity, and she spoke with all the rapid bitterness of a slow, cold nature, wrought up to an unnatural passion. In justifying herself she forgot quite that she had been sent to succor him until help arrived. She was turning away when Jan, in a voice full of misery, uttered one word:
“Water!”
Something womanly in her responded to the pitiful, helpless cry. She went back, and kneeling by his side, put the bottle to his mouth. The touch of his head upon her arm stirred her strangely; ere she let it slip from her hold, he had fainted.