"And you! Have you presumed to encourage that mere salaried clerk to hope to marry a Lawton? Understand this, if any child of mine ever went to live in a flat, I would not recognize her though she lay upon her death-bed! To be dragged down to poverty by another [the old man winced] is no crime, but to deliberately choose poverty is a vulgarity that is worse than crime! You will forbid this thing at once! What—love? They love each other? Bah! He's got a straight, flat back and good teeth and eyes—will they make up for a shabby wardrobe and no visiting list? Love? Love in poverty is an impossibility! I ought to know by this time!" she sneered, bitterly. "I've had plenty of opportunity for experimenting!" Without noticing the quivering of her husband's chin and mouth, she went on: "She's mad or a fool to throw away money and position for some hole-in-a-corner existence with a good-looking lawyer's clerk!"
"Letitia," broke in her husband very gently, "I don't just know what you mean, my dear, but I suppose you are speaking figuratively of money and position; but if you will let me explain all about young Galt's present standing and his future prospects, I think you will yourself sanction an engagement."
"The prospects of a mere clerk!" she jeered. "What a poor-spirited, broken thing you have become, calmly permitting one daughter to go upon the public stage, and giving the other to the first poverty-stricken applicant that asks for her! No! I'm not speaking figuratively of money and position! They are within her reach, and she shall accept them! She has no right to keep me in poverty, because she prefers it for herself! The time will come when she will thank me for my interference—that is, if she has not driven the man off forever! Perhaps even I may not be able to whistle back a Mr. Bulkley, once he is gone!"
"My God!" the words came in a sort of choking gasp. The man's pale eyes stared at her with a sort of questioning horror. "You do not mean—you can not mean?"
"I mean," recklessly responded the woman, "that with a few smiles and half promises from Dorothy and a little veiled management on my part, her well-ringed fingers might this moment be holding the strings of the Bulkley purse!"
"She must be mad!" interjected the trembling voice of the husband, as if thinking aloud. "It is a charity to believe her mad!"
"Then I'm mad from disappointment and wasted effort. Any opportunity is thrown away upon you! And Sybil hated him and opposed me at every turn! Yet with a little more time my finesse would have brought William Henry Bulkley to the point of marrying Dorothy!"
"Damnation!" cried John Lawton, as he sprang to his feet and stood a hard, breathing moment, holding fast to the corner of the dressing-table for support. His pale eyes shone with the phosphorescent glare of the angry cat. His long fingers opened and closed convulsively. For the first time in all her life, Letitia saw danger in him.
"You—are—an—infamous woman!" The words came slowly and with effort from his tremulous lips. "You have forgotten your motherhood, your womanhood! But you never forget the sweetly spicy savor of the flesh-pots of Egypt! No!" he cried with increasing anger, "nor have you forgotten the nature, the gross brutality, of this man, who has control of the flesh-pots you still dream of! You have not forgotten either the long, slow dying of his faithful wife, whom he crowned with public infamies! And since that time you know, as all people know, he has been one of the mightiest in a very sink of iniquity—know him to be a walking danger to unprotected innocence and a vainglorious 'friend' of fashionable vice! Yet to this immorality add an uncontrollably violent temper, impaired health, and a grandfather's years; and for a few fripperies and gew-gaws, a wrap or two of fur and velvet for the satisfaction of your vanity, you would fling, without a thought of her pure soul's fate—fling the white, sweet body of your innocent child into his foul embrace, relying on the name of wife to cover the iniquity! Dorothy, my little white-souled woman-child, and Bulkley? I—I wonder—I don't kill you, Letitia!"
He advanced toward her so fiercely that she shrank back, crying out in terror: "John! John! don't hurt me!"