“Yes, yes; I do know!” she cried violently, beating her breast with clenched hands. “I do know! I know that he still loves the poor girl who went out of this house with his curses ringing in her ears a score of years ago, and who died still hearing them. And I had almost come to the point of pitying him—I was failing—I was weakening. He is a wonderful man. I—I was losing myself. But that is all over. Three months ago I could have left him without a pang—yesterday I was afraid that it would never be possible. To-day he makes it easy for me. He has hurt you beyond all reason, not because he hates you, but because he loved your mother.”
“But you do love him!” cried Frederic in stark wonder. “You don't care the snap of your fingers for me. What is all this you are saying, Yvonne? You must be mad. Think! Think what you are saying.”
“I have thought—I am always thinking. I know my own mind well enough. It is settled: I am going away, and I am going with you.”
“You can't be in earnest!”
“I am desperately in earnest. You owe nothing to him now. He says you are not his son. You owe nothing but hatred to him, and you should pay. You owe vengeance for your mother's sake—for the sake of her whose face you have come to love, who loved you to the day she died, I am sure. He will proclaim to the world that you are not his son, he will brand you with the mark of shame, he will drive you out of New York. You are the son of a music-master, he shouts from the housetops! Your mother was a vile woman, he shouts from the housetops! You cannot remain here. You must go. You must take me with you. Ah, you are thinking of Lydia! Well, are you thinking of dragging her through the mire that he will create? Are you willing to give her the name he declares is not yours to give? Are you a craven, whipped coward who will not strike back when the chance is offered to give a blow that will———”
“I cannot listen to you, Yvonne!” cried Frederic, aghast. His heart was pounding so fiercely that the blood surged to his head in great waves, almost stunning him with its velocity.
“We go to-morrow!” she cried out in an ecstasy of triumph. She was convinced that he would go! “La Provence!”
“Good Heaven!” he gasped, dropping suddenly into a chair and burying his face in his shaking hands. “What will this mean to Lydia—what will she do—what will become of her?”
A quiver of pain crossed the woman's face, her eyelids fell as if to shut out something that shamed her in spite of all her vainglorious protestations. Then the spirit of exaltation resumed its sway. She lifted her eyes heavenward, and inaudible words trembled on her lips. A moment later she stood over him, her hands extended as if in blessing.
Had he looked up at that instant he would have witnessed a Yvonne he did not know. No longer was she the alluring, sensuous creature who had been in his thoughts for months, but a transfigured being whose soul looked out through gentle, pitying eyes, whose wiles no longer were employed in the devices of which she was past-mistress, whose real nature was revealed now for the first time since she entered the house of James Brood.