“Yes,” said the mother, “as thousands of daughters of Eve have believed before. There, cast away that thought, poor fool, and think now of hiding your sin from the world which will shun you as if you had the plague.”
“Mother!” cried the girl piteously.
“Don’t talk to me!” cried the woman fiercely, and she began to pace the room; tall, swarthy, and handsome for her years, her mobile countenance betraying the workings of the passionate spirit within her.
“Mother! Would I had never been one! My life has been a curse to me.”
“No, no; don’t say that, dear.”
“It has, I tell you. There’s something wrong in our blood, I suppose. Look at your brother.”
“Poor Julian!” sighed the girl.
“Poor Julian!” cried the woman scornfully. “Of course he is poor, and he deserves it. He must have been mad.”
“But he loved her, mamma, so dearly.”
“Loved!” cried the woman with a wild intensity of rage in her deep rich voice and gesture, as she spat on the floor. “Curse love! Curse it! What has it done for me? A few sickly embraces—a few years of what the world calls happiness—and then a widowhood of poverty and misery.”