“No, I am not so easily duped as you expected! I know too much of the world and its wickedness! Your pretense is a very clever one, but I can see through it!”
“Good heavens!” the young man exclaimed, in a shocked voice. His dark eyes blazed with indignation.
She went on, sharply:
“I wish you to understand that that brat can not remain under this roof to-night! You will send it away at once!”
Norman de Vere, by humoring the caprices of a selfish woman, had made himself almost a slave to her despotic will. With her to speak had always been to be obeyed, and she expected no less now.
“But, Camille, think,” he said, remonstratingly. “The child has no friends that I know of. Her mother perished in the wreck. I saved the child’s life, and I must take care of her until I hear from her friends. The charge you bring against me is utterly without foundation. Look at the little one. She is at least four years old. Remember, I was but a boy when I married you, two years ago.”
“I have heard that you were very wild when you were at college,” she replied, tauntingly. “This, no doubt, is the outcome of your youthful folly. The wretched mother has no doubt deserted the child, and you, with a foolish sentimentality, dared bring it under this roof to rear. Or perhaps,” her voice rising almost to a shriek of rage, “you had a double purpose in bringing it here! You wished—wished,” with a hysterical sob, “to taunt me with my childlessness!”
He stood staring at the beautiful fury, asking himself in wonder if this could be the same woman who such a little while ago had lain in his arms, clasping his neck, and giving him kiss for kiss. It scarcely seemed possible; such a fury she looked now with her blazing eyes and distorted features quivering with jealous rage. Yet he had seen her before in fits of jealous anger that usually culminated in hysterics.
Dreading this effect, he endeavored to soothe her; but all in vain, and only his remonstrance that she would be overheard by the servants had any effect in moderating her loud, shrewish tones. But she reiterated, though in a lower voice, her resolve that the child should be sent immediately away.
Her furious tones had already awakened little Sweetheart. She sat up on the sofa without a word, staring drowsily from one to the other with her sleepy blue eyes under her tangle of golden curls.