“It is false! It is false! You know it to be so! He has taught us nothing but what is pure and high! He never breathed a thought of evil to either of us, and Elna dares not say so! I love him as our lofty, noble brother, and shall continue to do so so long as he shows himself only to me, and to her, as he has done! Pray, madam, why do you permit him to remain in the house, if he be so wicked? You tell me you have the power to turn him out at any minute. Why not do it? Why do you trust your child with him, at all hours, and under all circumstances? Why do you so constantly seek his society yourself? If he were the fiend you represented, one would think you would have reason to fear for yourself, if not for Elna. What he has done once he will do again! How do you reconcile all this?”
The flashing look and withering tone in which this unexpected outburst of indignation, on the part of the usually quiet Moione, had been delivered, cowed the craven nature to which it was addressed. It was but for an instant, though; her subtle cunning returned to the charge, in a lower tone, and on another tack. She reached out her hand, affectionately, towards her—
“Come, Moione, dear! come, kiss me!”
The child did not move, but merely answered in a low, contemptuous “No!”
The woman continued, in a wheedling tone, “Hear! my naughty Moione! She will not come to kiss me, when I love her so! Moione does not understand everything she sees, or she would not have spoken thus sharply to her friend. She does not understand that I am striving to save this poor youth from his frightful vices! his wine-drinking, his tobacco, his meat-eating, and all those ugly sins which so deface, what I hope one day to see a beautiful spirit! She does not know I must endure this evil that good may come! She does not realise how much pain it costs me to have the purity of my household thus desecrated by his poisoned sphere! She does not remember that God has placed us here, on this earth, to bear and forbear towards his erring children; that they may, through us, become regenerate and redeemed! I know his eloquence, I know his subtlety, therefore I have warned you against him; he cannot be dealt with as other men, for he is but a foolish, headstrong boy, with a great soul, if he were only free; but while his vices hold him in bondage, he is not to be trusted. Though I have lifted him out of the very gutters of debasement—given him a home in my house—I have no confidence, at this moment, that he would not deliberately ruin either you or Elna to-morrow, if he could! You should, therefore, rather pity me than be angry with me, dearest Moione!”
“So I perceive!” said the young girl, with a cold sneer, as she turned and walked haughtily from the room, slamming the door emphatically behind her. The woman sprang to her feet, with an expression of ungovernable fury in her face. “The insolent, ungrateful wretch! This is what I get for all my trouble to make something out of her—to render her of some value to me! To sa-a-ve her!” and she hissed out the words with a horrible writhing of her features, while the pupil of her oblique eye was wrung aside, until nothing but the white, ghastly blank of the ball was to be seen.
“Yes, I’ll save you! I’ll use you, you insolent beggar! I have not brought you here, alone, as the ant carries off the aphide, to give spiritual milk to my own offspring! I brought you to use, too, and use you I will! I will coin you into profit! I’ll humble your insolent airs! I’ve got a market for you already, and a bidder! Dare to cross my path, ha?—with your supercilious insolence? I’ll bow that white forehead! I’ll fill those blue eyes with ashes! until, bleared and rheumy with premature decay, you crawl to kiss my foot for favors!”
During this horrid apostrophe, the woman had stood stiffened where she had first planted her feet upon the carpet, staring blankly at the door through which the young girl had passed, and throwing her arms out in wild gesticulations after her.
The girl Elna lay, in the meantime, with her face half concealed in the pillow, closely watching, with one sharp eye uncovered, the whole scene. The woman, who had forgotten herself in her fury, turned suddenly and saw her. Her manner instantly changed. She threw herself by her side, took her caressingly into her arms, drew her face close to hers, breathed upon it long and steadily, and then commenced in low, confidential tones, a conversation between them, the purport of which we must leave to conjecture.