"Felise, you have heard all, then?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously.
Felise turned her blazing dark eyes toward her mother, and Mrs. Arnold shuddered.
"All, all!" she echoed passionately; "ill news flies apace!"
"Felise, I feared this!" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold. "You were over-confident last night. Who could tell what form that old man's madness would take?"
"Who, indeed!" cried her daughter passionately. "And yet my theory seemed so plausible—who could have dreamed of its failure? But for him all would have gone as I planned it! But you cannot dream, mother, what that besotted old villain had the audacity to do!"
"It is not possible he suspected your complicity in the affair, Felise—he has taken no steps against us?" wildly questioned the mother as she sank into a chair half-fainting with terror.
"No, no, he has not done that, mother—his deviltry took another form."
"What, then, my dear? Oh! Felise, do sit down and calm yourself, and let us talk this matter over quietly," implored Mrs. Arnold anxiously.
"Calm myself—ha, ha, ha, when the blood in my veins has turned to molten fire, and is burning me to ashes! You are an iceberg, mother, with your cold words and calm looks, but you cannot put out the fire that is raging within me! Surely I must be wholly my father's child! There is nothing of you about me—nothing!"
"Yes, she is like her father—the more pity! For there was madness in his blood," Mrs. Arnold muttered inaudibly; "and I, oh! God—all my life I have fostered her evil passions, in my greed of gold, until now, when her reason totters on the brink of insanity. Oh! that I might undo my part in this fearful tragedy, and save her from the gulf that yawns beneath her feet!"