His old eyes gleamed angrily and his bent shoulders straightened; but his hands were tremulous. He rested one of them on the mantel and drew close to her again; but she went on relentlessly.
“Please sit down. I have something more to say to you. I have gone over it in my heart a thousand times in this year of deceit. I believe I have grown a good deal like you. It has been a positive pleasure for me to act a part,—shielding you from the eyes of people who were anxious for a breach between us. I know as I walk the streets and people say, ‘There is Ezra Dameron’s daughter,’ that they all pity me. They have expected me to leave you. They have wondered that I should go on living with you when every child in the community sneers at the sight of you or the mention of your name.”
“Shame on you! Shame on you! This is beyond the pardon of God!”
“I suppose it is a shameless thing to be saying to you; but I haven’t finished yet. And you had better sit down. You are an old man and I respect your years even though you are Ezra Dameron.”
His hand that lay on the mantel was trembling so that it beat the black slate shelf uncontrollably. She waited, with the patience of a parent in dealing with an erring child, until he turned and sat down.
“There was some one that told me—that warned me against you. I had hoped that it would never be necessary to tell you; but it gives me a keener happiness than I dare try to express to tell you now.”
“Yes; yes; some liar,—an infamous liar,” he muttered, and he looked at her with a sudden hope in his face. When he should learn who had come between him and this girl he would exhaust the possibilities of revenge.
Zelda read the meaning of his look and she smiled a little, and stepped to the table and turned up the lamp, and put his glasses within reach of his hand.
“I shall not trust myself to tell you. I shall let you read for yourself a few words, written by one who was not a liar.”
He watched her as she drew out the little red book, her talisman and her guide. He turned it over curiously and then read, at the place where she had opened: