He was addressing the young man's mother now, whose tear-stained face showed over Abbie's black hat, and whose poor old hand was laid tenderly on Abbie's shoulder. It was plain to every one now that the question was not one of money. Ogden saw clearly enough at last why he had suffered wreck when so many others had ridden the waves. Pratt had filched and had escaped. McDowell had plundered right and left and had never been brought down. Brainard himself had piled up a scandalous fortune and yet had contrived to evade the law. But none of them had come athwart the mortified rage of a father—a father who had humbled his inborn savageness and pride for a daughter's sake and had humbled himself in vain.
Stop!' cried Ogden.
Ogden glanced across towards Abbie. She rested on his mother's shoulder as once, almost, and in this very room, she had rested on his. He knew why she had come; he recognized her devotion and her bravery. She had overlooked his pitiful palterings; she had forgiven the final slight to which they had led; she had imperilled her modesty and mortified her self-love' by coming here that she might save him from her father's vengeance.
Her father looked at her now and took a softer tone.
"She's the best girl there ever was in the world," he declared, with a choking voice and a moistened glimmer in his eyes; "and the smartest—she knows how to do everything; she's the only real comfort I've ever had. She would be a credit to any man, I don't care who. And what does he pass her over for? For another," he went on, with a recrudescence of his insane and primitive jealousy, "who can't care for her house, who couldn't be a mother to his child, who has ruined him by her extravagance—"
"Stop!" cried Ogden. He rose and approached Brainard. There was a threatening glitter in his eyes, and convulsive twitches played among his fingers.
"Yes, stop, for Heaven's sake," said Fairchild, laying an expostulatory hand on the old man's arm. "Stop," he murmured again; "his wife is dying."
Abbie rushed between Ogden and her father. "George! George!" she cried. "Don't! Be patient!"