"Take them away!" cries she frantically, and then—sobbing heavily between her broken words—"Oh, I see how it is. You don't want me here at all. You wish I hadn't come. And I have no one but you—and poor papa said you would be good to me. But you are sorry he made you my guardian. You would be glad if I were dead! When I come to you in my trouble you tell me to go away again, and though I tell you I am hungry, you won't give me even some bread and butter! Oh!" passionately, "if you came to me starving, I'd give you things, but—you——"
"Stop!" cries the professor. He uplifts his hands, and, as though in the act of tearing his hair, rushes from the room, and staggers downstairs to those other apartments where Hardinge had elected to sit, and see out the farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it may prove, to its bitter end.
The professor bursts in like a maniac!
CHAPTER VIII.
"The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose."
"She's upstairs still," cries he in a frenzied tone. "She says she has come for ever. That she will not go away. She doesn't understand. Great Heaven! What I am to do?"
"She?" says Hardinge, who really in turn grows petrified for the moment—only for the moment.
"That girl! My ward! All women are demons!" says the professor bitterly, with tragic force. He pauses as if exhausted.
"Your demon is a pretty specimen of her kind," says Hardinge, a little frivolously under the circumstances it must be confessed. "Where is she now?"