“Worse—worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must forget him.”
“Never,” said Mary—“never! Who dare say that? Where is he?—take me to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.
“I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to another.
“Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”
“Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back the light to her eye, the peace to her heart? My gold that I have toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”
“The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so. God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”
“Why did the villain blast my home?” asked Jacob, apparently unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had to love—all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps He would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare her—take the misery out of her heart.”
“If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.
“Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so;—what has she done, poor lamb?”