CHAPTER LXVI.
THREATS AND PERSUASIONS.
Directly after James Harrington left the General's room, the waiting-woman Zillah entered cautiously, and with breathless eagerness. She stood some moments partly behind the General's chair, before he regarded her. When he did look up, a faint color swept over his face, and he made a gesture of annoyance.
"You are not pleased to find me here so soon," she said quickly, for impatience had for the moment disturbed the wonderful self-control with which her interviews with General Harrington were invariably conducted. "Is it a sign this woman, who has outraged the name of wife, is to triumph over me always?"
"Zillah!" answered the General, angrily, "my relations with my wife are beyond your interference."
"Your wife!" exclaimed the woman with a fiendish sneer. "You can still call her that!"
"Zillah, be careful. I have permitted you to go in and out of my house in this surreptitious fashion unmolested, from regard to old attachments; but you shall not again interfere in my family arrangements. The charges that you have, I see now, been the means of making against Mrs. Harrington, are groundless. I will not have a word spoken—mark me—against that excellent lady."
"What!" said the woman hoarsely; "what does this mean?"
"It means, Zillah, that I am perfectly convinced not only of Mrs. Harrington's rectitude, but of her entire attachment to myself. As for Mr. James Harrington, his conduct has been unexceptionable—nay, magnanimous. We are a happy and united family, Zillah."
"A happy and united family!" almost shrieked the woman. "And has it all come to this—am I again spurned, again hurled back to the earth—Hagar thrust forth to wander forever and ever with her child in the broad desert—the world. I tell you, General Harrington, this shall not be!"
"Shall not—slave, how dare you?" cried the old man, rising haughtily.