“Oh yes! Ah, to be sure!” stammered Richard, striving hard to recover himself, with a miserable mask-like smile overspreading his features. “Glad to see you—sit down. That will do, Bailly; I’m engaged if any one should call.”
The clerk left the office, and closed the door, walking back to his stool with a prominence in one cheek which drew forth sundry winks from fellow-labourers in Pellet and Company’s money-mill. But the door of Richard Pellet’s private office was thick and baize-lined, and no inkling of the scene within reached the ears of the clerks.
No sooner had the door closed upon them, than the smile was driven from Richard’s face by a bitter scowl, and rising from his chair, he took two or three strides to where his visitor stood, hissing between his teeth—“Curse you! what brings you here?” Such a fierce aspect, accompanied as it was by threatening gestures, would have made many recoil; but Richard’s visitor stepped towards him, and caught him by the breast, exclaiming—
“I have been unhappy lately; I could not rest there. I want my child!”
“Curse your child!” cried Richard, in an angry whisper, and then, with a cowardly, back-handed blow, he sent the poor creature staggering against the wall; but her countenance hardly underwent a change, as, starting forward again, she caught him once more by the coat, repeating her words—
“I want my child!”
“How dare you come here?” he exclaimed, in a low, angry voice. “How dare you come here to disgrace and annoy me? How came you away from—from your lodging that I got for you?”
“I came away—I want my child!” was the only reply.
“There! hush! Don’t speak so loud!” said Richard, in an angry whisper, as he glanced uneasily at the door, and stepping to it, slipped into its socket a little brass bolt. “Did I not tell you never to come here? and did you not promise?”
“Yes, yes!” was the hoarse answer; “but I want, I will have, our little one. I have been to the man who had it—I found him out; but he would not give it to me. You have told him not. I could not rest for thinking about it. I want my child, and then we will go far away together.”