"Won't you shake hands?" he pleaded gently. "I'm sorry that I expected more of you than you could give, Lucy! but I want you to be happy, and I think and hope you will be, if you let the best part of you have its way. Still, it may happen that I shall never see you again—so let us part friends!"
She raised her eyes, hardened now in their expression by intense malignity and spite, and fixed them fully upon him.
"I don't want to be friends with you any more!" she said. "You are cruel and selfish, and you have treated me abominably! I am sure you will die miserably, without a soul to care for you! And I hope—yes, I hope I shall never hear of you, never see you any more as long as you live! You could never have really had the least bit of affection for me when I was a child."
He interrupted her by a quick, stern gesture.
"That child is dead! Do not speak of her!"
Something in his aspect awed her—something of the mute despair and solitude of a man who has lost his last hope on earth, shadowed his pallid features as with a forecast of approaching dissolution. Involuntarily she trembled, and felt cold; her head drooped;—for a moment her conscience pricked her, reminding her how she had schemed and plotted and planned to become the wife of this sad, frail old man ever since she had reached the mature age of sixteen,—for a moment she was impelled to make a clean confession of her own egotism, and to ask his pardon for having, under the tuition of her mother, made him the unconscious pivot of all her worldly ambitions,—then, with a sudden impetuous movement, she swept past him without a word, and ran downstairs.
There she found half the evening's guests gone, and the other half well on the move. Some of these glanced at her inquiringly, with "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," but she paid no heed to any of them. Her mother came eagerly up to her, anxiety purpling every vein of her mottled countenance, but no word did she utter, till, having put on their cloaks, the two waited together on the steps of the mansion, with flunkeys on either side, for the hired brougham to bowl up in as un-hired a style as was possible at the price of one guinea for the night's outing.
"Where is Mr. Helmsley?" then asked Mrs. Sorrel.
"In his own room, I believe," replied Lucy, frigidly.
"Isn't he coming to see you into the carriage and say good-night?"