“He has turned you out,” she went on rapidly. “He disowns you. Very well; the time has come for me to exact payment of him for that and for all that has gone before. I shall go away with you. I———”
“Impossible!” he cried, finding his tongue and drawing still farther away from her.
“Are you not in love with me?” she whispered softly.
He put his hands to his eyes to shut out the alluring vision.
“For God's sake, Yvonne—leave me. Let me go my way. Let me———”
“He cursed your mother! He curses you! He damns you—as he damned her. You can pay him up for everything. You owe nothing to him. He has killed every———”
Frederic straightened up suddenly and, with a loud cry of exultation, raised his clenched hands above his head.
“By Heaven, I will break him! I will make him pay! Do you know what he has done to me? Listen to this: he boasts of having reared me to manhood, as one might bring up a prize beast, that he might make me pay for the wrong that my poor mother did a quarter of a century ago. All these years he has had in mind this thing that he has done to-day. All my life has been spent in preparation for the sacrifice that came an hour ago. I have suffered all these years in ignorance of———”
“Not so loud!” she whispered, alarmed by the vehemence of his reawakened fury.
“Oh, I'm not afraid!” he cried savagely. “Can you imagine anything more diabolical than the scheme he has had in mind all these years? To pay back my mother—whom he loved and still loves—yes, by Heaven, he still loves her—he works to this beastly end! He made her suffer the agonies of the damned up to the day of her death by refusing her the right to have the child that he swears is no child of his. Oh, you don't know the story—you don't know the kind of man you have for a husband—you don't———”