“You have travelled post from Calais or Boulogne, doubtless?” observed Laura, interrogatively: “for your clothes are covered with dust—and it is evident that you were not cooped up in the interior of a diligence. I may therefore conclude that you were successful in your search after Torrens and your designs upon him,” she added, fixing a penetrating glance upon her mother’s countenance.
“I was so far successful that I obtained certain intelligence concerning him,” responded the old woman: “but I failed altogether in my hope of becoming the possessor of his money.”
“And what was the intelligence to which you allude?” demanded Laura, who felt convinced from her mother’s manner that she had not failed in the object of her journey.
“I learnt, beyond all question or doubt, that Torrens really was the murderer of Percival, but that he himself had met with a violent death.”
“Ah! Torrens is no more?” exclaimed Laura: then, bending a look full of deep meaning upon her mother, she said in a tone of equal significancy, “You went to London to be revenged upon him—and he is dead! He has experienced a violent end. Well—I understand you—I read your secret—and you need not be more explicit.”
“By heaven! you wrong me, Laura,” exclaimed the old woman, starting in astonishment and alarm as the justice of her daughter’s horrible suspicion became suddenly apparent—a suspicion that she herself had so incautiously engendered by the mysterious manner in which she had announced Torrens’ death.
“It is not worth while disputing upon the subject,” said Laura, in a tone which convinced her mother—and, indeed, was intended to convince her, that no explanation could now possibly wipe away the suspicion alluded to. “You are doubtless well pleased that Torrens is no more—and that is sufficient.”
“Perdita—Laura, I mean,” said the old woman, speaking as if her tongue were parched, or as if ashes clogged up her throat, “why should you take delight in uttering things to vex and annoy me? For some time past—indeed ever since the date of your connection with Charles Hatfield, a barrier has appeared to rise up between us. We seem to act towards each other as if it were tacitly understood that we are enemies, or that we mutually harboured distrust and suspicion.”
“I am aware of it, mother—and it is all your own fault,” answered Laura. “You sought to exercise over me a sway to which I would not and never will submit; and you menaced me in a manner not easily to be forgotten.”
“But you had your revenge—for you abused me vilely,” retorted Mrs. Mortimer, with a malignant bitterness of accent.