“You crushed my love. You made me your wretched innocent tool and slave when you brought me here, and at last you brutally told me all the cruel truth. Even then, heartbroken, I clung to you, and suffered in silence. God knows how I tried to bring you to penitence and a better life. I forgave all for the sake of our child; and in my love for her I would have gone on bearing all.”
“Have you nearly done?” he said mockingly.
“Nearly,” she said, in the same firm, clear tones; and she seemed to tower above him, pale and noble of aspect, while he, drink-brutalised and blotched, seemed to shrink.
“I say I would have borne everything, even if you had beaten me like a dog. But when—oh, my God, judge between us and forgive me if I have done wrong!—when I am called upon to see my innocent child dragged down by you to the fate of being the wife of the villain who has been your partner in all your crimes, my soul revolts, and I say—from this hour all between us is at an end.”
“And I say,” he yelled, “that you are my wife, this my child, and you shall obey me. Come; I am master here.”
He made a snatch at her arm, but she raised it before him, with outstretched palm, and her voice rang out with a cry that made him shrink and cower.
“Stop!”
There was a moment’s utter silence, broken by the softly heard tramp of feet.
“Husband no longer, father of my child no more. Robert Hallam, you are my convict servant! I discharge you. Leave this house!”
Hallam took a step back, literally stunned by the words of the outraged woman, who for so long a time had been his slave, while Bayle uttered a long sighing sound as if relieved of some terrible weight.