“But why, why, WHY, my mother? that is what I wish to know, what I ought to know, what I will know! for when you pronounce a sentence that may consign me at eighteen years of age to the long-living death of an existence without love, without friendship, without sympathy, without communion with my kind, I ought, I must, I WILL know the reason why!” cried Alma, with wild and startling energy.
“Poor wretch!” muttered the lady, with something like pity vibrating in the cold monotone of her voice, and disturbing the strong rigidity of her features—“poor wretch! you rush blindly upon your fate just as I did! Aye, your very words were once mine! Alma, when, eighteen years ago, Hollis Elverton rushed into my presence, and, in frenzied despair, told me that we must part then, there, and forever, I, too, in the extremity of my anguish and terror, demanded and wrung from him the why—the WHY that doomed me to that living death of widowhood.”
“And he told you. My father kept no secret from the wife of his bosom,” said the young girl.
“He told me. Alma, there are things that kill the soul in the body and turn the body into stone! He told me—he whispered one dreadful word in my ear that struck me down at his feet as a thunderbolt strikes a statue to the ground! When I recovered my consciousness he was gone, and I knew that he could not, ought not, must not ever return!”
“And yet he loved you, my mother?” whispered Alma, in the half hushed tone of awe.
“Yes,” muttered the lady.
“And yet you loved him?”
“Yes.”
“And your marriage was happy up to that fatal evening?”
“Perfectly happy.”