Beatrice looked up mournfully and inquiringly.
“If it had been his base life which I sought,” said Brandon, vehemently, “I might long ago have taken it. He was surrounded on all sides by my power. He could not escape. Officers of the law stood ready to do my bidding. Yet I allowed him to leave the Hall in safety. I might have taken his heart’s-blood. I might have handed him over to the law. I did not.”
“No,” said Beatrice, in icy tones, “you did not; you sought a deeper vengeance. You cared not to take his life. It was sweeter to you to take his son’s life and give him agony. Death would have been insufficient—anguish was what you wished.
“It is not for me to blame you,” she continued, while Brandon looked at her without a word. “Who am I—a polluted one, of the accursed brood—who am I, to stand between you and him, or to blame you if you seek for vengeance? I am nothing. You have done kindnesses to me which I now wish were undone. Oh that I had died under the hand of the pirates! Oh that the ocean had swept me down to death with all its waves! Then I should not have lived to see this day!”
Roused by her vehemence Despard started from his abstraction and looked around.
“It seems to me,” said he, “as if you were blaming some one for inflicting suffering on a man for whom no suffering can be too great. What! can you think of your friend as he lies there in the next room in his agony, dying, torn to pieces by this man’s agency, and have pity for him?”
“Oh!” cried Beatrice, “is he not my father?”
Mrs. Compton looked around with staring eyes, and trembled from head to foot. Her lips moved—she began to speak, but the words died away on her lips.
“Your father!” said Despard; “his acts have cut him off from a daughter’s sympathy.”
“Yet he has a father’s feelings, at least for his dead son. Never shall I forget his look of anguish as he stood on the balcony. His face was turned this way. He seemed to reproach me.”