"Would it be strange, mother, if your daughter, improving on your lessons, had added another feature to her accomplishments—had from the Midnight Queen,"—I lowered my voice—"become the Midnight Poisoner?"
I met her gaze boldly—and she turned her face away.
He died without ever a dog to mourn for him, and his immense wealth was inherited by a deserted and much abused wife, who lived in a foreign land.
Immense wealth in him bore its natural flower—a life of shameless indulgence, ending in a miserable death.
I did not shed very bitter tears at his funeral. Hatred is not the word to express the feeling with which I regard his memory.
Soon afterward my mother was taken ill, and wasted rapidly to death. Hers was an awful death-bed. The candle was burning to its socket, and mingled its rays with the pale moonlight which shone through the window-curtains. Her brown hair, streaked with gray, falling to her shoulders, her form terribly emaciated, and her eyes glaring in her shrunken face, she started up in her bed, clutched my hands in hers, and—begged me to forgive her.
My heart was stone. I could not frame one forgiving word.
As her chilled hands clutched mine, she rapidly went over the dark story of her life,—how from an innocent girl, she had been hardened into the thing she was,—and again, her eyes glaring on my face, besought my forgiveness.
"I forgive you, Mother," I said slowly, and she died.
My father was not present at her death, nor did he attend her funeral.