“An adventurer with many aliases; a fraudulent claimant of the Haymore estates, who has sustained his false position by robbery, forgery and perjury, but who has been recently detected, and who is about to be exposed and punished.”
“I am not surprised! I am not surprised! I expected something like this! I did! I did! Tell me, does Mr. Will Walling know anything about it?”
“He knows all about it. His business in England is to bring that man to justice.”
Lamia sprang from her father’s arms, throwing him suddenly back by the violence of her motion, and began to walk wildly up and down the floor, exclaiming and gesticulating like a maniac, and thinking only of herself and of her own interests, and of no one and nothing else under the sun.
“To bring me to this! Oh, the villain! the villain! But I will have nothing more to do with him! I will never speak to him again! I will never look on his face again! Do you hear me, papa?” she cried, suddenly pausing, with flashing eyes, before her father’s chair. “Do you hear me, I say? I will never live with that felon again—never speak to him—never look at him!”
“My child, you are quite right in your resolution. It would be wrong and even criminal in you to do otherwise,” said John Legg, gently drawing his daughter into his arms again and adding sorrowfully, “for I have something more to tell you.”
“You could not tell me anything more shameful than you have already told me! Even if you should prove that that villain had been a murderer, as well as a robber, forger and perjurer, it would not be worse, since hanging is no more disgraceful than penal servitude. To be the wife of a felon—the wife of a convict! But I will not be! I will be separated by law! I will be divorced!”
This she repeated over so often and with so much excitement that at last her father said to her:
“My poor child, you will not need to appeal to the law.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded, impressed by the solemnity of his manner.