"I would have given you all I possessed in the world—my own poor self in marriage—and you led me on to believe that you wished to marry me, but, finally, you would not have me. You went off and married another woman."
"Bah! we are talking around in a circle, and getting back to where we began. Let us come to the point."
"Very well; come to the point," said Rose, sulkily.
"Listen, then: It is not for your reckless elopement with your step-father's pupil, when you were driven from home by cruelty; it is not for your false marriage with Stillwater, when you yourself were deceived; but because with all these antecedents against you—antecedents which constituted you, however unjustly, a pariah, who should have lived quietly and obscurely, but who, instead of doing so, took advantage of kindness shown her, and betrayed the family who sheltered her by luring into a disgraceful marriage its revered father, and bringing to deep dishonor the gray head of Aaron Rockharrt, a man of stern integrity and unblemished reputation—you should be denounced and punished."
"Oh, Fabian, have mercy! have mercy! You would not now, after years of friendship, you would not now ruin me?"
"Listen to me! You checkmated me in that matter of the cottage and the income. Yes, simple as you seem, and sharp as I may appear, you certainly managed to take all and give nothing. And when you found but that you could not take my hand and my name, you waylaid me at the railway station, when I was on my wedding tour, and you swore to be revenged. I laughed at you. I advised you to be anything rather than dramatic. I never imagined the possibility of your threatened revenge taking the form of your marriage. Well, my dear, you have your revenge, I admit; but in your blindness, you could not see that revenge itself might be met by retribution! One man kills another for revenge, and does not, in his blind fury, see the gallows looming in the distance."
"What do you mean? You cannot hang me for marrying your father," exclaimed Rose.
"No; don't raise your voice, or you may be heard. No, Rose, I cannot hang you for treachery; but, my dear, there are worse fates than neat and tidy hanging, which is over in a few minutes. I could expose your past life to my father. You know him, and you know that he would show no ruth, no mercy to deception and treachery such as yours. You know that he would turn you out of the house without money or character, destitute and degraded. What then would be your fate at your age—a fading rose past thirty-seven years old? Sooner or later, and very little later, the poor-house or the hospital. Better a sweet, tidy little hanging and be done with it, if possible."
"You are a fiend to talk to me so! a fiend! Fabian Rockharrt," exclaimed Rose, bursting into hysterical sobs and tears.
"Now, be quiet, my child; you'll raise the house, and then there will be an explosion."