He knew now that that ruddy cloud moving over the darkening sky reminded him of Cara. He turned his face toward the face of the woman standing there.
"Irene is thy daughter," said he—"for what meaning have blood-bonds when there are no others? I had a child who was my own—"
At that moment desire for revenge boiled up in him; the desire to crush, so he finished:
"And I lost her—through thee!"
"Through me?"
Her questioning cry was full of amazement.
"Thou knowest of nothing then? They have hidden it from thee? A proper regard for the delicate nerves of a woman! But my rude nerves of a man feel the need of sharing this knowledge with thy nerves."
Slowly and emphatically he uttered his words; words which, from moment to moment, were hissed through his pallid lips, and thus he concluded:
"Once thy daughter had an interesting conversation with me; a very interesting conversation about—everything which took place in our family idyl. The little girl, hidden behind some furniture, heard the conversation, and became mentally disordered—oh! temporarily, of course, and this would have passed, but under its influence she exposed herself to the cold night air so as to die. Inflammation of the lungs was complicated by mental disorder. Her death—was suicide."
The last words went out of his straitened throat in a suppressed whisper, still they were so definite as to be heard in every part of the great chamber. They were deadened, however, by the overpowering shriek of the woman and the noise made as her body fell to the floor. Pani Darvid's knees bent under her, and dropping, with her face in her hands, her head struck the corner of the table near which she had been standing. At that moment Irene shot into the chamber; like a skylark, flying forward to defend its little ones, she ran to her mother, and surrounding her bent form with both arms, she raised to her father a face covered with a flood of tears.