She had to tell him everything,—her humiliations in her father’s house, the insults she had endured, the wicked slanders by which her honor had been tainted, the incomprehensible blindness of the count, the surly provocations of her step-mother, the horrible attentions of Sir Thorn; in fine, the whole abominable plot which had been formed, as she found out too late, for the purpose of driving her to seek safety in flight, and to give herself up to Maxime de Brevan.
Trembling with rage, livid, his eyes bloodshot, Daniel suddenly let go Henrietta’s hands, and exclaimed in a half-smothered voice,—
“Ah, Henrietta! your father deserved—Wretched old man! to abandon his child to the mercy of such miserable wretches!”
And, when the poor girl looked at him imploringly, he replied,—
“Be it so! I will say nothing more of the count. He is your father, and that is enough.”
Then he added coldly,—
“But that M. Thomas Elgin, I swear by God he shall die by my hand; and as to Sarah Brandon”—
He was interrupted by the old dealer, who tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said with an indescribable smile,—
“You shall not do that honor to the Hon. M. Elgin, M. Champcey. People like him do not die by the sword of honest men.”
In the meantime Henrietta had resumed her history, and spoke of her surprise and amazement when she reached that bare room in Water Street, with its scanty second-hand furniture.