Mrs. Farnham turned her head aside, and taking a crystal flask from the table before her, refreshed herself languidly with its perfume.
"Did you authorize this, madam?" cried the young man, impatiently, dashing one hand against the paper that he held in the other. "This purchase, and after that the seizure of the old man's property?"
"Dear me, how worrying you are," answered the lady, burying the pale wrinkles of her forehead in the lace of her handkerchief; "how can I remember all the orders with regard to a property like ours?"
"But do you remember this?"
"Why, no, of course I don't," cried the lady, with a flush stealing up through her wrinkles, as the miserable falsehood crept out from her heart; "of course the man did it all on his own account, there's no medium with such people. Certainly it was his own work. What do I know about business?"
The young man looked at her sternly. She had not deceived him, and a bitter thought of her utter unworthiness made the proud heart sink in his bosom.
"Mother," he said, coldly, and with a look of profound sorrow, "whoever has been the instigator, this is a cruel act; but I have prevented the evil it might have done."
"You prevented it, how?" cried the mother, starting to her feet, white with rage, all her langour and affectation forgotten in the burst of malicious surprise, that trembled on her thin lips, and gave to her pale, watery eyes the expression, without the brilliancy, that we find in those of a trodden serpent. "What have you done, I say?"
"I paid the money!"
Mrs. Farnham sat down, and remained a moment gazing on the calm, severe face of the youth, with her thin hand clenched upon the folds of her morning dress, and her foot moving impetuously up and down on the carpet, as if she wanted to spring up and rend him to pieces.