He turned and looked in wonder at the door, which opened then, and Aunt Marguerite, dressed in one of her stiffest brocades, pale, but with her eyes stern and fierce, entered the room, to sweep slowly across, till she was opposite to George Vine, when she crossed her arms over her breast, and began to beat her shoulder with her large ivory fan, the thin leaves making a peculiar pattering noise against her whalebone stiffened bodice.
“Don’t talk to him, Margaret,” said Uncle Luke, coming forward. “He is not fit. Say what you have to say another time.”
“Silence! you poor weak imbecile!” she cried, as her eyes flashed at him. “What do you do here at a time like this? Now,” she continued, darting a vindictive look at her broken-hearted brother, “what have you to say?”
“To say, Margaret?” he replied piteously. “God help me, what can I say?”
“Nothing, miserable that you are. The judgment has come upon you at last. Have I not striven to save that poor murdered boy from you—to raise him from the slough into which you plunged him in your wretched degradation? Time after time I have raised my voice, but it has been unheard. I have been treated as your wretched dependant, who could not even say her soul was her own, and with my heart bleeding, I have seen—”
“Margaret, you were always crazy,” cried Uncle Luke fiercely; “are you raving mad?”
“Yes,” she cried. “Worm, pitiful crawling worm. You are my brother by birth, but what have I seen of you but your wretched selfish life—of you who sold your birthright to sink into the degraded creature you are, so degraded that you side with this man against me, now that he is worthily punished for his crime against his son.”
“I cannot listen to this,” cried Uncle Luke furiously. “Let her speak,” said George Vine sadly; “she thinks she is right.”
“And so do you,” cried Aunt Marguerite. “If you had kept the poor boy a gentleman all this would not have happened. See to what extent you have driven the poor, brave-hearted, noble boy, the only true des Vignes. You, degenerate creature that you are, maddened him by the life you forced him to lead, till in sheer recklessness he took this money, struck down the tyrant to whom you made him slave, and at last caused him to be hunted down till, with the daring of a des Vignes, he turned, and died like one of his chivalrous ancestors, his face to his foes, his—”
“Bah!” cried Uncle Luke, with a fierce snarl, “his chivalrous ancestors!”