“Spare you, indeed!” she repeated, in a contemptuous tone: “in what way can I spare you? If you ask me not to betray you into the hands of the officers of justice, I at once reassure you on that head—but with the one condition that you surrender up to me, and without further parley, every sixpence of the amount you have secreted somewhere in this place. I do not seek your life: I wish you to live, that you may be miserable—that you may know what starvation is—that you may wander the streets, houseless and penniless—dependent upon eleemosynary charity—begging your bread——”
“Merciful heaven! it is a fiend who is addressing these frightful words to me now!” ejaculated Torrens, surveying his wife with horror and astonishment.
“No—it is a woman,—a woman whom you deserted in her bitter trouble, and who now wreaks her vengeance upon you,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “Carry back your reminiscences some nineteen years or upwards, and contrast our positions then. You found friends and relations to console you while still in gaol, and to assist you after your release. But did you come near me? did you even send a word or a line to sympathise or to proffer aid! Miserable wretch that you are, I could wish that you were ten thousand times more miserable still!”
“Oh! that is impossible—impossible!” exclaimed Torrens, his cadaverous countenance denoting, by its hideous, painful workings, the sincerity—the profound sincerity that prompted the averment he had just made. “Were you to search the earth over, you could not find a being more miserable than I! And now—and now,” he continued, in a faltering tone, while tears trickled down his furrowed cheeks,—“now, will you have compassion upon me?”
“No—ten thousand times no!” ejaculated Mrs. Mortimer. “And I warn you to hasten and surrender your wealth—or I shall lose all power of restraining my impatience.”
Torrens rose from his seat, cast one look of malignant—diabolical hate upon the merciless woman, dashed the traces of grief away from his cheeks, and then turned towards the bed.
Mrs. Mortimer followed him with her eyes—those eyes now so greedy, suspicions, and anxious lest by any possibility her prey should escape her!
The wretched old man, whose heart experienced all the pains of hell, slowly and with trembling hands raised the miserable mattresses; and from beneath he drew forth a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a thick string. This he handed to Mrs. Mortimer, who, heedless of the terrible glance which accompanied it, hastened to open the packet and examine its contents.
And now her triumph was complete;—for the parcel enclosed gold and notes to an amount which she proceeded in a leisurely manner to compute.
“Five thousand four hundred pounds,” she said aloud, casting a malignant look upon Torrens, who had resumed his seat and appeared to be the victim of a despair that must terminate in the total wreck of his reason. “And here,” she continued, now musing to herself rather than speaking for his behoof,—“here is a document that may prove of some importance to me,—the promissory note of the young man who called himself Viscount Marston.”