“And would you send me to the scaffold?” demanded the wretched woman, her voice becoming plaintive and mournful: “would you place me in such a position that I must inevitably sink beneath a mass of circumstantial evidence, and be condemned as a murderess?”
“Would you send your own child into transportation, the horrors of which you yourself have experienced?” asked Laura, bitterly.
“Oh! my God—this is a punishment for all my crimes!” exclaimed the miserable Mrs. Mortimer, a pang of remorse suddenly shooting through her heart like a barbed and fiery arrow.
“You should have calculated all the consequences before you came hither to menace me,” observed Laura, still in a cold and severe tone—a tone that was unpitying and merciless.
“Can nothing move you?” asked the wretched woman, now completely subdued and cast down—overwhelmed and spirit-broken.
“Nothing!” responded Laura, sternly. “You may do your worst—I fear you not; and henceforth I acknowledge you not as my mother!”
Saturated with crimes—steeped in profligacy as the old woman’s soul was, nevertheless this sudden renunciation of her by her own daughter went like a death-pang to her heart. She fell back again into the seat from which she had started a few minutes previously—a deadly pallor came over her countenance, rendering it hideous and ghastly as if the finger of the Destroyer were upon her—and her breath came in long and difficult sobs.
But her daughter stood gazing unmoved on this piteous spectacle,—stood like an avenging goddess, in her white robes, as if about to immolate her victim upon an altar!
“Give me a glass of water, Laura—for the love of God, a glass of water!” gasped the old woman at length, as she extended her arms piteously towards the relentless being, whose heart, so voluptuously tender beneath the influence of love, was hard as adamant against the appeals of her parent.
“Nothing—no, not even a drop of water, nor a crust of bread shall you receive beneath my roof,” was the unpitying, remorseless answer.