“If you insist upon knowing, I believe they were not married—at least it was the general opinion in the Island. But would not Mr. Tarver be the proper person to inform you of anything which you may wish to know?”
Harriet seized his hand and carried it to her forehead—it was burning hot.
“Feel that!” she exclaimed, “and you would have me wait for weeks before I could get any satisfaction from Mr. Tarver, and not then perhaps! Do you think I could live through the agony of suspense. I should kill myself before the answer to my letter came. No! you are the only person that can give me any satisfaction. Madame Gobelli told me to ask you for the truth, if I did not believe her!”
“Madame Gobelli,” reiterated the doctor in surprise.
“Yes! I was staying with her at the Red House until last night, and then she was so cruel to me that I left. Her son Bobby is dead, and she accused me of having killed him. She said that my father was a murderer and my mother a negress—that they were both so wicked that their own servants killed them, and that I have inherited all their vices. She said that it was I who killed Mrs. Pullen’s baby and that I had vampire blood in me, and should poison everyone I came in contact with. What does she mean? Tell me the truth, for God’s sake, for more depends upon it than you have any idea of.”
“Madame Gobelli was extremely wrong to speak in such a manner, and I do not know on what authority she did so. What can she know of your parents or their antecedents?”
“But you—you—” cried Harriet feverishly, “what do you say?”
Doctor Phillips was silent. He did not know what to say. He was not a man who could tell a lie glibly and appear as if he were speaking the truth. Patients always guessed when he had no hope to give them, however soothing and carefully chosen his words might be. He regarded the distracted girl before him for some moments in compassionate silence, and then he answered:
“I have said already that if a daughter cannot hear any good of her parents, she had better hear nothing at all!”
“Then it is true—my father and mother were people so wicked and so cruel that their names are only fit for execration. If you could have said a good word for them, you would! I can read that in your eyes!”