Sir Philip was for the moment struck dumb with surprise and indignation. That his colorless, obedient wife should dare in his absence to make a will, leaving money away from him to his rebellious daughter, struck him as a most unwifely and outrageous liberty, and the desire to sting and humiliate both his wife and daughter became too strong to be resisted.
“Your little girl!” he repeated, with a hard laugh. “Haven’t you grown out of that silly delusion yet? Your child died years ago, as a weakly, miserable baby. That girl beside you, to whom you are so anxious to will your money, is no relation to you, but simply the daughter of my first wife, who died at her birth, exactly three months before I married you.”
“Philip! Stella! It is not true—say it is not true!” gasped Lady Cranstoun.
“How can you be so cruel?” exclaimed the young girl, turning in passionate reproach upon her father. “Don’t worry, and don’t listen, mamma, dear. You know that I am yours, and that I love you!”
“Your dutiful affection is not without its reward,” sneered Sir Philip. “Five thousand pounds is certainly a great deal more than you would ever get from me. But it is time this mother and daughter nonsense was done away with, except for the purpose of giving the girl a more respectable ancestry than she could show as the daughter of a gypsy. Where did you suppose she got her beauty from? You Douglases have always been an ugly, high-cheekboned race. There is nothing of the Douglas about her.”
Lady Cranstoun was moaning as if in pain, and her pale eyes had a hunted, terrified expression as she turned them helplessly from her husband to Stella.
“Not my child,” she whispered. “Not—my—child!” and as the words left her lips, she fell backward in Stella’s arms, cold and motionless, to all appearance dead already.
“You have killed her!” the latter cried, as she vainly tried to restore animation to the still figure, and for a few moments Sir Philip believed, not without a momentary pang of self-reproach, that she was right. Gradually, however, under Dr. Graham’s care, consciousness returned, but only feebly; and throughout the morning she fell from one fainting-fit into another. Stella never left her for a moment, and everything that skill and care could do was done to prolong the faint flicker of life within her wasted frame. A heart specialist was telegraphed for from London, and Lord Carthew, who had intended leaving for town early in the day, having heard no word of Hilary’s presence in the vicinity, delayed his journey until he could hear the doctor’s verdict.
It was unfavorable in a high degree. Lady Cranstoun was, so the great man agreed with Dr. Graham, slowly dying, and could not possibly last through the night. Toward evening she suddenly appeared to rally, recognized and spoke to Stella, and asked in a clear, distinct voice for Lord Carthew. When the young man came, she gave him her hand, and drew his toward that of Stella, which rested on the coverlet beside her.
“Be—very good—to her,” she murmured; and so, still occupied with thoughts for Stella’s future, she closed her eyes and fell asleep, never to open them on this world again.