"When I came to settle up my estate, I found myself practically impoverished. That is, everything had been so attached, encumbered, I could get no benefit from it. My income must be turned back to the estate, to save it. My only salvation—yours—was to cut myself off from all but a pittance, until every claim had been met, and I stood free and quit. That has been done. I owe no man anything. I have sacrificed much, but not my integrity, and not one acre, one security belonging to the property your great-grandfather left me, rescued from my husband. It is all intact. Your inheritance——"
Katherine was on her feet in an instant.
"Inheritance!" she blazed. "You have just told me what my inheritance is! Fraud, lies, treachery—everything that is base. What does money matter to a creature like me? I can never get away from what I am. As you say, 'the taint is too strong!' Hush! I am speaking now. And I'm going to speak, and you've got to listen! For once in my life, I am going to have my say—I'm going to forget I am young and you are old, and I'm going to let you know what I have been feeling, thinking, being all these years, when you've thought I was a tame thing you could order about, and scold and ridicule, to the top of your bent.
"I know, now, why I was a lonely, unloved child. I've always wondered, before, for I tried to be good—even when I was too much of a baby to be anything else. I know, now, why you watched me out of the corners of your eyes, as if you were waiting for me to try to deceive you, in some way. You were waiting for my 'inheritance' to crop out. How could I ever have been anything, but at my worst with you? How could I be clever, when you insisted I was dull? How could I be myself, when you condemned me, by your fears, to be my grandfather, and my father? What you waited for, came. Of course it would. I stole, I lied. I was a coward. 'The taint was too strong!'
"But let me tell you this, it needn't have been so. I could have been saved if, when I was a child—— Oh, I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
She shrank together into a wretched heap on the floor, her head bowed on her knees.
Madam Crewe gazed at her, a strange shadow creeping over her face. As if to herself, she murmured, "That is what your grandfather used to plead—and your father. Whenever they were discomforted, they always said they couldn't bear it. So they didn't bear it. I—and others—had to bear it."
The sound of her voice, low as it was, brought Katherine to her feet. All the pent-in passion of her life, breaking loose now, beat mercilessly down upon the defenseless old woman before her. In some unaccountable way, the two seemed to have changed places. It was she who dominated, her grandmother who submitted.
The lamp burned low, sending out a rank odor that filled the room. The clock struck out three deep bell-notes.
Katherine, shuddering, sobbing, felt herself caught up in the whirlwind-strength of a new impulse. She turned her back on her grandmother. A moment, and the door of her own chamber shut her in.