"She told him that the fault was his own; that he should never have received a young man as a resident pupil in the house where there was a young girl.
"A fierce quarrel ensued, which was ended at last by the reverend gentleman going out and banging the door behind him with a force that shook the house, and in a state of mind that rendered him singularly unfit to read the prayers for the sick beside the bed of a dying parishioner to whom he was urgently summoned.
"Mrs. Rosslynn immediately hastened to wreak her vengeance on her step-daughter. She set her teeth as she seized the unlucky girl, whom she found at work in the kitchen, pushed her roughly on into the narrow passage up the steep stairs and into the little back loft that the child called her own bedroom.
"Here she took a firmer grip upon the girl, and with a dog whip that she had hastily snatched from the hat rack in passing, she lashed the hapless creature over back and shoulder.
"Ann never struggled or cried out, but held her tongue in fierce wrath and stubborn endurance. Could that woman, the victim of all ungovernable passions, have but known what she did, or foreseen its results!
"At last she ceased, pushed the bruised and wounded child away from her, sank panting to a chair, and as soon as she recovered her breath, began to insult and abuse the orphan child of her deceased husband, charging her with disgracing the house by improper conduct, of which the girl had never even dreamed; accusing her of causing the loss of their pupil and the income derived from him, and reproaching her for making discord between herself (Mrs. Rosslynn) and her husband.
"Ann replied by not one word.
"At length the maddened woman, having talked herself out of breath, got up, left the room, and locked the door, not on her victim alone, but on all the evil spirits she had raised from Tartarus and left with the girl.
"Ann sank upon the bed, weeping, moaning, and grinding her teeth, her body prostrated by pain, her soul filled with bitter wrath and scorn toward one whom she should rather have been led to love and honor. In the fiery torture of her flesh and the humiliation of her spirit she uttered but these piteous words:
"'Oh, my own mother!—oh, my lost father! do you see your child?'