“‘Oh!’ I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her escaping while we were yet talking, ‘God knows I had rather have died than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother’s feeling for her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.’
“He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. ‘She is going—you believe she is going to meet him?’
“‘I do,’ said I.
“He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.
“There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her. Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in those days to Colonel Japha’s room, the right to the apartments occupied by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards the front door by the terrible, ‘Stop!’ whose echo had reached me in my room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.
“‘You are my child!’ he was saying. ‘I have loved you and do still; but proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate, and the door that opens upon you, shuts never to open again!’
“‘Colonel!’ I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.
“‘I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!’ issued from the set white lips of the girl beneath us. ‘There is no such charm for me in this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!’ And she lifted her foot to proceed.
“‘Jacqueline!’ I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything, ‘Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but death. A man who can take a young girl from her father’s house, from her lover’s arms, from her mother’s grave, from the shrine of all that is pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome and deadly, is not one with whom you can live. You say you adore him: can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline, you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was carried out to her grave!’
“She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her father’s face; it was set like a flint.