Perhaps there was some malevolent spirit who on that occasion, before the glow of the winter fire, once more brought to the lips of the poor girl that subject always lying so near her heart—marriage. She mentioned the word, and for the first time since he had given her shelter under his roof, Philip Pomeroy hurled an oath at her. Perhaps he had been taking wine somewhat too freely, in one of the tempting supper-rooms of the city; or some other cause may have disturbed his equanimity and brought out the truth of his worst nature. The reply of Eleanor Hill to this was the not unnatural one of a burst of tears, and that outburst may have maddened him still more. The truth came at last, in all its black, bitter, naked deformity:
"Eleanor, you have made a fool of yourself long enough! No more of this whining, or it will be the worse for you! When I marry you, I shall be very nearly out of business; and if you have not had judgment enough to know that fact before, so much the worse for your common sense!"
Eleanor Hill staggered up from her chair and cast one glance full into the face of her destroyer. Her eyes could read the expression that it bore, then, if they had never before attained the same power. There was neither the smile of reckless pleasantry nor the unbent lines of partial pity for suffering, upon that face. All was cold, hard, determined, cruel earnest, and the victim read at last aright what she should have been able to decipher more than two years before. And never the life of a dangerous infant heir went out beneath the choking fingers of a hired murderer, at midnight and in silence in one of the thick vaulted chambers of the Tower, more suddenly or more effectually than at that moment the last honorable hope of Eleanor Hill expired, strangled by the hand of that "guardian" who had promised beside a dying bed that he would shield and protect her as his own child!
In that hard, cold face Eleanor Hill at last read her destiny. She had been weak, compliant and submissive, but never reconciled to her shame; and at that moment began her revolt.
"I understand you at last," she said. "After all your promises, you will not marry me!"
"Once for all—no!" was the firm reply, the cruel face not blenching in the least before that glance, mingled of pain and indignation, and so steadily bent upon it.
"Then I have lived long enough in this house—too long!" broke from the lips of the young girl. "I will leave it to-morrow. You cannot give me back the thing of most value of which you have robbed me—my honor and my peace of mind; but my father left my property in your hands—give me back that, so that I may go away and hide myself where I shall never be any more trouble to you or to any others who know me."
"Humph! your property!" was the reply, in so sneering a tone that even the unsuspicious ears of the victim caught something more in the manner than in the words themselves.
"Yes, I said my property—the property my father left in your hands for me!" answered poor Eleanor, striving to conquer the deadly depression at her heart and to be calm and dignified. "You have told me the truth at last; and I will never ask you the question again if you will give me enough money for my support and let me go away from this life of sin into which you have dragged me."
"You want to go away, do you!" again spoke the doctor, in the same sneering tone. "And you expect to support yourself upon what you call 'your property?'"