"God preserve it to you, my child," replied Doña Carmen tenderly, as she looked at her.
There was a brief silence.
"Do you know what I have been told?" she asked finally, with an effort, and her voice was so low that the last syllables were scarcely audible.
Clementina, who was about to read again, raised her head. The few drops of blood left in Doña Carmen's emaciated body suddenly rushed to her face and tinged it with a faint flush.
"I was told—that you wish for my death."
Clementina's rich blood now mounted in a tide to her cheeks and dyed them crimson. The two women looked at each other for a moment in confusion. At last it was the younger who exclaimed, with a dark frown:
"I know who told you that!"
And as she spoke the blood faded from her face again like a sudden fall of the tide. Her stepmother's retreated to her weary heart. She bent her head with its white hairs, and said:
"If you know, do not utter his name."
"Why not?" cried her wrathful stepdaughter. "When a father, with no motive whatever, solely for the sake of a few dollars, can insult his daughter and make a martyr of his wife, he has no right to claim either affection or respect. I say it, and I do not care who hears me. It is an infamous calumny! My father is a man who knows no God, no love but money. I knew that your will had alienated his love for me—if indeed he ever had any."