"And this is your gratitude for the care, the anxiety, the very agony of a mother's anxiety, which I have endured on your account for years! In return for all you condemn me to—poverty! But it shall not be. One of us must bend, and that one will not be me. I swear, girl,"—her brows were knit, she was lividly pale, and she raised her right hand to heaven,—"that you shall marry this man."
"And I swear,"—I bounded to my feet, my bosom bare, and the blood boiling in my veins—perchance it was the same blood which gave my mother her fiery temper,—"I swear that I will not marry him as long as there is life in me. Do you hear me, mother? Before I marry that miserable wretch, whose very presence fills me with loathing, I will fall a corpse at your feet."
My words, my attitude took her by surprise. She surveyed me silently but was too much enraged to speak.
"O, that my father was living!" I cried, the fit of passion succeeded by a burst of tears; "he would save me from this hideous marriage."
My mother quietly drew a letter from her bosom and placed it open in my hand.
"Your father is living. That letter is the last one I have received from him. Read it, my angel."
I took it,—it was very brief,—I read it at a glance. It was addressed to my mother, and bore a recent date. These were its contents:
"Dear Frank:
"My sentence expires in two weeks from to-day. Send me some decent clothes, and let me know where I will meet you. Glad to hear that your plans as regards our daughter approach a 'glorious' completion.
"Yours as ever,
"Charles."
It was a letter from a convict in Auburn prison,—and that convict was my father!
"It is false; my father died years ago," I cried in very agony. "This is not from my father."