"My God! You know—" and the strong man turns from her, and hides his face in his quivering hands.
Then she goes on, faltering a little over the words, but still goes on: "Why have you disgraced our name? Why have you become a Mormon—a Polygamist?"
Here he astonishes her by whispering, with white lips, these curious words: "I did it that I might settle upon you a million! For your sake I became Mormon—for your sake I became polygamist. I DID IT FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES!"
CHAPTER XII.
A DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH.
For a moment, Erma believes this extraordinary statement, and falters, seeming almost to invite his caresses, at least not to repulse them.
Seeing this, Ralph Travenion mutters, "Thank God, you believe me!" and flies to take her in his arms; but suddenly her dead mother's face seems to the girl to rise between her father and herself. She shudders, turns away from him, and says coldly: "You ask me to believe this monstrous thing,—that for my sake you became a Mormon?"
"Yes, as God is above me!—to make you rich,—to place you above the care of poverty,—to surround you with luxury,—the thing that has been my one thought in life."
"Was that your thought?" cries the girl suddenly, with a face that to him is beautiful as an angel's, but just as that of the angel's God—"was that your thought when you entered into polygamous marriage with those women down there? Oh, don't attempt to deny it!" for he is about to open his lips. "I saw two of them. I was at the Sunday-school meeting of the Twenty-fifth Ward, and beheld your hostages to your faith—five little ones, I believe. One of them, a girl, Mr. Oliver Livingston was kind enough to say, looked like me."