"Miserable child!" he said at length, "do you know what your terrible temper has wrought?—that in your mad passion you have nearly or quite killed your little sister? that, even should she live, she may be a life-long sufferer, in consequence of your fiendish act?"
"O papa, don't!" she pleaded in broken accents, cowering and shrinking as if he had struck her a deadly blow.
"You deserve it," he said: "indeed, I could not possibly inflict a worse punishment than your conduct merits. But what is the use of punishing you? nothing reforms you! I am in despair of you! You seem determined to make yourself a curse to me instead of the blessing I once esteemed you. What am I to do with you? Will you compel me to cage or chain you up like a wild beast, lest you do some one a fatal injury?"
A cry of pain was her only answer, and he turned and left the room.
"Oh!" she moaned, "it's worse than if he had beaten me half to death! he thinks I'm too bad, even to be punished; because nothing will make me good: he says I'm a curse to him, so he must hate me; though he used to love me dearly, and I loved him so too! I suppose everybody hates me now, and always will. I wish I was dead and out of their way. But, oh! no, I don't; for I'm not fit to die. Oh! what shall I do? I wish it was I that was hurt instead of the baby. I'd like to go away and hide from everybody that knows me; then I shouldn't be a curse and trouble to papa or any of them."
She lifted her head, and looked about her. It was growing dusk. Quick as a flash came the thought that now was her time; now, while almost everybody was so taken up with the critical condition of the injured little one; now, before the servants had lighted the lamps in rooms and halls.
She would slip down a back stairway, out into the grounds, and away, she cared not whither.
Always impulsive, and now full of mental distress, she did not pause a moment to consider, but, snatching up a hat and coat lying conveniently at hand, stole noiselessly from the room, putting them on as she went.
She gained a side-door without meeting any one; and the grounds seemed deserted as she passed round the house and entered the avenue, down which she ran with swift footsteps, after one hasty glance around to make sure that she was not seen.
She reached the great gates, pushed them open, stepped out, letting them swing to after her, and started on a run down the road.