Margaret looked about the room, which she had so long regarded as home. Then her eye rested on herself disfigured by the faded and unsightly garments which Jacob’s parsimony compelled her to wear, and she smiled,—a smile of such bitter mockery, such deep and woful despair,—that she almost shuddered to see it reflected in the mirror opposite.
“There is no time to waste,” she muttered, slowly. “This can be my home no longer. I must do what I have to do and be gone.”
She opened a small drawer in the bureau, and drew out a half sheet of paper. It seemed to have been used for trying the pen, the same names together with particular letters, being several times repeated on it. Among the names that of Rand occurred most frequently.
Margaret smiled—this time a smile of triumph.
“Jacob Wynne! Jacob Wynne!” she repeated to herself, “what would you say if you knew that I hold in my hand the evidence of your crime,—forgery! forgery!”
Her eyes sparkled with vindictive joy.
“You would not sleep so quietly in your bed to-night, Jacob Wynne, if you knew that I hold it in my power to hurl you into prison a convicted forger! Why should I not do it? Tell me that, Jacob Wynne. Why, indeed; shall I have compassion upon you who have had no pity for me? Never! never!”
“When you are in prison,” she continued, in a tone of yet deeper vindictiveness, “I will come and visit you, and taunt you with the knowledge that it is to me you owe your disgrace. Think you that she will smile upon you then; that she will be ready to stand before the altar as I did?—Heaven help me!—and plight her faith to a convicted forger?”
Margaret’s whole nature seemed changed. Her love seemed to have given place to a deadly resentment.
She collected a few articles, and packed them in a small bundle.