“Dear mamma, do not look so terrified. Let his anger fall on me; sit down. That pale face must not tell him that you have ever known of these letters.”
Mrs. D. sank to a seat, striving to regain some degree of composure, and Myra went down-stairs, very pale, but making an effort to sustain with dignity the reproaches that she felt to be prepared for her.
“Here, young lady!” said Mr. D. as Myra entered the room; “here is a letter from that Whitney again—a letter to me—asking permission to visit you.”
Myra drew a deep breath; in her agitation she had forgotten that this letter might be expected, and so long as her father’s anger had only this source, she could withstand it.
“Well, papa, and you will answer it?” said the young girl, gently, but still with some tremor of the voice.
“I will!” was the angry reply; “I will answer it as such presumption deserves!”
“Surely—surely, papa, you will not forget that Mr. Whitney is a gentleman, and deserving of courteous treatment?”
“I forget nothing!” was the curt reply; and without further argument Mr. D. left the room, and in half an hour after an old colored man was galloping toward Wilmington, with a letter, directed to Mr. Whitney, in his pocket. What that letter contained might have been guessed from the hasty and blotted address, had it not been written black as night on the angry forehead of Mr. D. when he sat down to breakfast that morning.
A few days went by—days of keen anxiety to poor Myra and her gentle mother; then was the young girl summoned once more to the presence of Mr. D. She found him white with rage—deeper and more terrible rage than his fine features had ever exhibited before; a letter was clenched tightly in his hand; his fingers worked convulsively around the crushed paper as he addressed the trembling girl.
“Twice—twice in my life have I been insulted, girl! By your father once—by your lover now. He is coming here! He will be in Wilmington in a few days, will he! Let him come; but as I live—as I live, girl, he shall never leave that place alive! This insult shall be atoned then and there.”