"I tell you she can never be anything to me," he cried. "I hate her as I hate her mother. The woman took my son from me and she keeps him from me. If she had not bewitched him he would have been back long before this. She has been everything to him while I, his father, have been nothing."
He strode back and forth, carried away with his anger. She had never seen him like this. Suddenly he stopped before her.
"Go to your room," he said almost harshly, "and never speak of those creatures to me again; besides, what right have you to mix up in this? Who told you to speak to me in such a manner?"
For a moment she was dumbfounded, then she said:
"Oh, no one, sir, I assure you. I just put myself into your little granddaughter's place, that is all."
He softened somewhat, but he continued still in a severe voice: "In the future do not speak on this subject; you see it is painful for me and you must not annoy me."
"I beg your pardon," she said, her voice full of tears; "certainly I ought not to have spoken so."