CHAPTER XV.
A COUNTERPLOT.
It is a half hour later. The light in the room is increased by a sputtering additional candle, and Papa Francoise, sitting by the deal table, is gazing toward the door, an eager expectant look upon his face.
“If that old woman were here!” he mutters, and then starts forward at the sound of a low hesitating tap.
Hurrying to the door he unbars it with eager haste, and a smile of blandest delight overspreads his yellow face as the new-comer enters.
It is a woman, slender and graceful; a lady, who holds up her trailing black garments daintily as she steps across the threshold, repulsing the proffered hand-clasp with a haughty gesture, and gliding away from him while she says in a tone of distressful remonstrance:
“Man, why have you sent for me? Don’t you know that there is such a thing as a last straw?”
“A last straw!” His voice is a doleful whine, his manner obsequious to servility. “Ah, my child, I wanted to see you so much; your poor mother wanted to see you so much!”
The woman throws back her veil with a gesture of fierce defiance, disclosing the face of Leslie Warburton pale and woe-stricken, but quite as lovely as when it shone upon Stanhope, surrounded by the halo of “Sunlight.”
“You hypocrite!” she exclaims scornfully. “Parents do not persecute their children as you and the woman you call my mother have persecuted me. You gave me to the Ulimans when I was but an infant,—that I know,—but the papers signed by you do not speak of me as your child. Besides, does human instinct go for nothing? If you were my father would I loathe these meetings? Would I shudder at your touch? Would my whole soul rise in rebellion against your persecutions?”