The Actress' Daughter: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

GONE.

"Oh, break, break heart! poor bankrupt, break at once."

Shakespeare.

"Break, break, break,
At the foot of the crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

Tennyson.

here was an instant death-like pause, and all gazed, white with horror, on the scene before them. Freddy lay perfectly motionless, and Georgia, terrific in her roused wrath, stood over her like some dark priestess of doom. Not a voice dared to break the dreadful silence until Richmond Wildair, with a face from which every trace of color had faded, and with a terrible light in his eyes, strode over and caught Georgia by the arm.

"Woman! fiend! what have you done?" he said, hoarsely.

She looked up, wrenched her arm free from his grasp, sprang back and dauntlessly confronted him.

"Given her the reward for which she so long has been laboring," she said, in a voice awful from its very depth of calm.