“Penelope told you something of your mother’s story. I wonder if she told you all?”
“Yes, all that I ever care to hear,” Magdalen replied. “I know of her clandestine marriage, her wretched life at Beechwood, of their taking Alice from her, and of—of your cruel neglect of her.”
She said the last hesitatingly, for there was something in the blue eyes fastened upon her which prevented her saying as hard things as she felt.
“Yes, it’s all true, and more,” Mr. Grey replied. “Penelope could not tell you as bad as it was, for she never knew all. I did neglect your mother when she needed me the most. I liked my ease. I could not endure scenes. I was afraid of mother. I acted a coward’s part, and Laura suffered for it. She was beautiful once,—oh, so beautiful when I first met her in her sweet young girlhood! She was much like you, and I loved her as well as I was capable of loving then. I had been thwarted and crossed, and had done things for which I have always been sorry, but never as sorry as since I have known you were my child, for there is something in your face which seems continually to reproach me for the past, and until I have made you my confession, I feel that there cannot be perfect confidence between us. I think I had seen you before you came to Beechwood.”
“Yes, in Belvidere, at Mrs. Irving’s grave, though I did not know who you were. I had not heard of you then.”
She knew about Jessie,—Mr. Grey was sure of that, and with something between a sigh and a groan, he said:
“You have heard of that sad affair too, I see; but perhaps you don’t know all, and how I was deceived.”
“Yes, I know all. I have seen Mrs. Irving’s letter—the one she wrote on board the ‘Sea Gull,’ and to which you added a postscript. Mr. Grey, why did you write so coldly? Why did you express no sorrow for what you had done? Why did you leave a doubt of Jessie to sting and torment poor Roger, the truest, the best man that ever lived?”
Magdalen was confronting her father with poor Jessie’s wrongs, and he felt that, if possible, she resented them more than those done to her mother.
“I was a fiend, a demon in those days,” he said. “I hated the old man who had won the prize I coveted so much. I did not care how deeply I wounded him. I wanted him to feel as badly as I felt when I first knew I had lost her. I was angry with fate, which had thwarted me a second time and taken her from me just as I thought possession secure. I did not despair of coaxing her to go with me at last,—that is, I hoped I might, for I knew her pliant nature; but death came between us, and even in that terrible hour, when the water around me was full of drowning, shrieking wretches, I cursed aloud when I saw her golden hair float on the waves far beyond my reach, and then go down for ever.”