Mrs. Lauderdale came between them again, laying her hands on Katharine’s arm and trying to make her leave the room.
“Take care, take care!” she cried, anxiously, and hardly knowing what she said. “Alexander—Katharine! Don’t—oh, please don’t quarrel like this—my child, my child! You’re beside yourself!”
“I’m not—it’s true as life and death!” answered the girl, resisting the pressure. “Ask him if it’s not! Make him swear that it’s not true—make him say, before heaven, that he has less than a million, while he’s selling his daughters and forcing his wife to work. Wait—don’t speak—listen to what he says! If he can’t say it, his whole life has been a lie, and he knows it—wait—hush!”
Katharine held her mother fast by the hands, and seemed to hold her own breath, her angry eyes fixed on her father’s face. Mrs. Lauderdale turned her head instinctively, and looked at him. He met their glances for a few seconds, and his dry, pale lips parted as though he were about to speak, but no sound came. In the waning light his eyes had a glassy look. It only lasted a moment, and then his mouth was twisted with an expression meant for a smile.
“Take her away—she’s mad,” he said, and his voice seemed to be suddenly weak.
Katharine laughed aloud, bitterly and cruelly, in her triumph.
“If I were mad, as you say I am,” she said, a moment later, “that would not make it impossible for you to tell the truth. Yes, mother—I’m going now. I’ve said it all—and you know it’s true.”
She dropped her mother’s hands, turned contemptuously away, and left the room. Neither her father nor her mother moved as she went, though they followed her with their eyes until the door closed behind her with a soft click.
Alexander Lauderdale was torn by the strongest emotions of which he was capable—anger and avarice. But avarice was the stronger. So long as Katharine had accused him of unkindness, of dishonesty in his treatment of Wingfield, of meanness in his household, his wrath, though powerless, had kept the upper hand. But at the sudden and unexpected accusation of possessing a fortune in secret, he had been cowed. It was characteristic of him that even in that moment he would not swear falsely, and he saw the folly of denying the statement if he could not support his denial with something like an oath. When passions have reached such a crisis, they are not satisfied with less than they demand. On the whole, it had been wiser to say nothing. He could admit afterwards that he had saved something—he would assure his wife that Katharine’s statement had been exaggerated—little by little, calm would be restored. And there would not necessarily be any increase of expenditure. At that crucial moment two thoughts had been uppermost in his mind. The miser’s dismay at the discovery of his wealth, and the miser’s visions of ruinous expense in the immediate future. In a flash, he had seen himself forced to spend fifty or sixty thousand a year, instead of ten or twelve, and all possible forms of reckless extravagance had appeared to him in a horror of kaleidoscopic confusion. It was torture to think of it—to realize that his secret was out.
The strong man stood, half-stunned, leaning against the mantelpiece, pulling nervously at the bit of embroidered velvet which covered it, his face drawn in an expression of suffering and fear. He dreaded the question which he knew that his wife would ask him, but he had not even the power to speak at that moment, in order to ward it off.