Mrs. Carew laughed mockingly.
"I would not give her a penny if she were starving to death!" she said.
"Your own husband's daughter!" he said, reproachfully.
"I hate her the more for that. I hate everybody he ever loved!" she replied, vindictively.
"You hated poor Zaidee and caused her death, I know," he replied, bitterly.
Her face suddenly grew livid, and she looked at her accuser with startled eyes.
"It—it is false!" she muttered, weakly.
"It is God's truth," answered the old man. "You told Zaidee Carew a trumped-up story of her husband's falsity, and then—her death followed. Answer me this, madame: Was her death a suicide or—a murder?"
She quailed before the stern old man, pale as death, trembling with nervous alarm; but Alpine rose up suddenly and interposed between him and her mother.