“Cave anguem!” sneered the priest, with a brutal laugh.
I turned upon the pale woman with a furious stamp.
“Why did you never let me know? How dared you keep it from me? I will go to law about it and have you hanged!”
“If I could have thought”—she began, in a whisper; “if I have by chance done wrong”—
“Wrong!” I cried violently, “you have done me nothing but wrong since I came here. You have always misunderstood and disbelieved in me; and now, it seems, you had no right to adopt me at all.”
I ended with a torrent of tears.
“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent, and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”
“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect your duds.”
“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.
“No, don’t touch me—please,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters, who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want—only not stop here.”