“Yes, father. I am here. Margot!”
Her glance passed from the father to the son but there was no relenting kindness in it. When the young suffer it is profoundly, and the inmost depths of Margot’s nature were stirred by this first sight of her father’s enemy.
“Philip Romeyn’s wife lies in the grave, whither your persecution sent her. I am her daughter and his, come to make you do a tardy justice. To make you lead me to the place where you have hidden the bonds, the gold, you said he stole! For if stealing was done it was by your own hands, not his.”
“Margot—Margot! This is my father!” cried Adrian, aghast.
“Yes, Adrian, and my father—my father—wears a convict’s garb this day because of yours!”
“No, no! No, no. I tried to save him, but he would not save himself! I begged him, almost on my knees I begged him, the little shaver, to confess and get the benefit of that. But he would not. There was no hope for him from the beginning. None. They found me all but dead. The money gone. He by me, the steel rod in his hand with which we used to fasten the—that very safe. I—— Why, I can see it all as if it were to-day, even though they lifted me for dead, and found him standing, dazed and speechless. When they questioned him about the money he said: ‘Ask Malachi Wadislaw. I never touched it.’ That was all. But they proved it against him. I was dead—almost—and I was beggared. Beggared!” his voice rose to a scream, “by that brave little shaver who had once—once saved my life. Robbed and murdered—his benefactor, who had made him rich and prosperous. Should he not suffer? Aye, forever!”
The silence that followed this speech was intense. The builder ceased his inquisitive tapping and listened spellbound. Old Joe stood rigidly behind the girl whom he had followed. Adrian scarcely breathed. Accused and accuser faced one another, motionless.
Then: “Where—was—it?” demanded Margot. “Show me—the place.”
“Here. Here, in this very sanctum to which nobody had the entrance but us two. There—is the monster safe that was robbed. With such another rod of steel”—he pointed to a bar resting above the safe—“was I struck—here.” His hand touched for an instant a deep scar on his temple and an involuntary shudder passed over the girl’s frame.