“Exhausted, and all but dead, I was picked up by a fishing-smack, and saved to become your accuser, and the avenger of those whom you have so deeply injured. Laura Stanbridge, are you prepared to die?”
“Gracious heaven, no! I am unfit to die,” said she, and she made the tears rise to her eyes, and turned upon Alf Purvis, one of those mournful and languishing looks by which the hearts of men are destroyed.
But this look was lost upon him. He knew her but too well.
“Is this all?” she said, scornfully. “Am I to be murdered?”
“My son evaded your wiles,” said Mrs. Grover. “It is well for him that he did so.”
“He offered me his hand and made me love him,” returned Laura. “Then, not content with affronting me by a rejection, he became my most bitter enemy. Is it in any way surprising that I should have striven to have revenge for the injuries sustained?”
“I will not answer you, infamous and merciless woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Grover. “But we have here another victim.”
The third accuser now advanced and bared his aged and weather-beaten face. This was the old ferryman.
“And who is this? Who is this?” cried Laura Standbridge, her hair undulating and rising over her head as if alive.
Mrs. Grover laughed.