The passionate blood rose in the girl’s face and the words came again.
“No, mother—stay here!” she said. “You have no right to go away. Yes—I say that for months you’ve been doing your best, both of you, to destroy my happiness—and you’ll destroy my life with it, if I stay with you longer. You’ve tried to separate me from the man I love, and you’ve been trying every day and every hour to make me marry another man—pushing him on, encouraging him, telling him that I would accept him—for all I know, telling him that I loved him. I’ve not forgotten the things you’ve done—I’ve not forgotten the day when you, mother, you who had stood by us so long, suddenly turned without reason and told Jack to go away. Here, in this very room, last winter—and you, papa—I’ve only to make you remember how you took that letter when it was brought, and kept it all day, and repeated all the lies that people told about Jack—and mother read me the things in the papers—and you made me believe that he had written to me when he was drunk. It was all a lie, a miserable, infamous lie! And you liked it, and repeated it, and turned it over and embroidered it and beautified it—to make it hurt me more. It did hurt me—it almost killed me—but for Jack’s sake, I wish to God it had!”
“Katharine, this is blasphemy!” exclaimed her father, his cold eyes glittering with rage—but he was not fluent, he could find no words to dam the stream of hers.
“Blasphemy!” she cried, indignantly. “Is it blasphemy to pray—unless your God is my Devil?”
Beside himself with passion, her father made a step forward, and with a quick movement covered her mouth with one hand and grasped her arm with the other. But he miscalculated her quickness as against his strength. With a turn of the hand and wrist she was free and sprang backwards a step.
“It’s like you to lay your hands on a woman, after trying to sell her!” she cried, her lips turning a dull grey, her eyes colder and brighter than his own.
Being roused, they were terribly well matched. Mrs. Lauderdale threw herself between them. To do her justice, she faced her husband, with one hand stretched out to warn him back.
“No, no, mother! don’t come between us. I’m not afraid—I only got my mouth free to tell him that he’s a coward to lay his hands on me. But that was his only answer, because the things I say are true—every one of them, and more, too. That’s your one idea—both of you—to marry me off and get me out of the house, because you can’t look me in the face after the things you’ve done—after coming between me and Jack, as you’ve tried to do, and would have done, if we’d loved each other less—after trying to force me upon the first man who took a fancy to my face—after tormenting me to betray uncle Robert’s confidence—and it’s all been for money, and for nothing else. Money, money, money!”
“My child, you’re mad!” cried Mrs. Lauderdale. “What has money to do with it? What are you talking about? Do you know that you’re making the most insane accusations?”
“Let her talk,” said Alexander, in a low, sullen voice. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”