“My parents saw less of me than anybody,” replied Harriet, sadly, “they were ashamed of their ‘bastard’, I suppose! But old Pete loved me, and took me with him everywhere, and he didn’t get sick,” she concluded, with a faint smile.
“Of course not! See! what rubbish you have been talking—making yourself and me unhappy for nothing at all! So now let me take you in my arms and kiss the remembrance of it away!”
He was about to put his suggestion into execution, but she still shrank from him.
“No! no! indeed you must not! It is all true! I cannot forget Olga Brimont, and Mrs. Pullen, and the baby, and poor Bobby! It is true, indeed it is, and I have been accursed from my birth.”
And she burst into a torrent of passionate tears.
Pennell let her expend some of her emotion, before he continued,
“Well! and what is to be the upshot of it all!”
“I must part from you,” replied the girl, “Indeed, indeed I must! I cannot injure you as I have done others! Doctor Phillips said I was not fit for marriage—that I should always weaken and hurt those whom I loved most—and that I should draw from them, physically and mentally, until I had sapped all their strength—that I have the blood of the vampire in me, the vampire that sucks its victims’ breaths until they die!”
“Doctor Phillips be damned!” exclaimed Pennell, “what right has he to promulgate his absurd and untenable theories, and to poison the happiness of a girl’s life, with his folly? He is an old fool, a dotard, a senseless ass, and I shall tell him so! Vampire be hanged! And if it were the truth, I for one could not wish for a sweeter death! Come along, Hally, and try your venom upon me! I am quite ready to run the risk!”
He held out his arms to her again, as he spoke, and she sank on her knees beside him.