"It was worse. She was jealous then in addition to being vindictive. If she had only been cruel to me and kind to him, I believe I could have stood it. For I loved that boy as I have loved few things in life. But she was cruel to him too. She neglected him. And finally—well, you know how it ended. Everybody knows the dishonor she brought on the name of De Jarnette. That is one thing I hate her for. From the time she left her child, a helpless baby of four years, I have had no faith in so-called mother-love. It is good to talk about. It sounds well. It is all right till the test comes—and sometimes the test never does come—but if it does, they'll fly the track every time. You can't depend on a woman. They are treacherous."
"What effect did her going away have on your father—in his relations to you, I mean? Did it bring his affections back to you?"
"No. You would suppose it would have had that effect, but it didn't. It made him misanthropic and hard. He could not bear Victor in his sight. The child seemed to be a constant reminder of the mother and the disgrace she had brought upon him. Then it was that I got into the habit of looking out for him. My father was a hard man—an unforgiving man. He ruled with a rod of iron. I've taken many a whipping that would have fallen upon Victor, small as he was, if I hadn't lied for him."
"Perhaps you would have done him better service to have let them fall upon him," the doctor was thinking.
"You see how it is, Bob. That is why he has always seemed so close to me. I really think of him more as my child than my half-brother. And that's why it hurts.... Oh, well! If he had only waited a few years I think I could have consented to it with a better grace. But my consent wasn't asked."
On his way home Dr. Semple looked at it with a professional eye. "The man has a wrong bias," he said, at last. "It was a case of malpractice, and it has left him with his nature out of joint. If he could have a hard enough wrench in the right hands it might be re-set. But where is the surgeon?" Then he went back to the cause. "Women are accountable for a deal of evil in this world. And it doesn't all come by 'ordinary generation,' as the catechism puts it. Oh, well!"
CHAPTER III
MRS. PENNYBACKER OF MISSOURI
Two or three weeks after the wedding Mrs. Pennybacker sat with her niece in the elegantly appointed library of the mansion that old Cornelius Van Dorn had left to his bereaved widow.