“He is waiting here in fatherly love and compassion, to be a shelter to his only daughter in the hour of her utmost need.”
Lamia turned deadly pale and sick. The words of the lawyer, taken together with the awful exclamation of her husband before he fell into his stupor, warned her that some terrible revelation was at hand.
“Oh! this is some horrid nightmare!” she muttered.
At this crisis the sauntering and unsteady steps of Mr. Leegh brought him up to his sister’s side.
“And now!” he exclaimed, “what is all this? And who the dev—deuce—mischief are you, sir?”
“Oh, Cassius!” cried Lamia in great excitement. “This is Mr. Walling, of the firm of Walling & Walling, New York, of whom you have heard us speak. There is something dreadful the matter that has gathered all these people here. He tells me that our father is here also——”
“The old man! What is the—what has brought him here?” demanded Leegh in as sharp a tone as his sister had used.
Will Walling was as much disgusted with the one as with the other. He answered the question:
“Your father is here, Mr. Leegh, to succor his daughter in her distress. Presently I shall ask you, her brother, to lead her to your father’s presence.”
“It is my husband. My beast of a husband! What has he been doing! Oh, Heaven! I heard him say something about murder, and I thought it was only his drunken raving. Has he committed murder, then, and will he be hanged? If so, I will never show my face in England or New York again!” exclaimed Lamia, losing all decent self-control and becoming hysterical, not from anxious affection, but from alarmed pride.