Francis S. Smith.
Clifford Standish paused to note the effect of his boasting on Mrs. Fitzgerald.
Every statement he had made was a falsehood, but he knew that she could not disprove a single one.
The magnificent salary of which he boasted was only fifty dollars a week, and as for his rich mother who made him such a handsome allowance, and would leave him a fortune when she died, the old woman was as poor as poverty itself, and took in washing. But as she lived away off in Colorado, he was not afraid that she would ever appear to contradict his statement. In fact, he had told the same story to every new acquaintance, until he had almost come to believe it himself.
He judged that Mrs. Fitzgerald was proud and arrogant, and would prefer her daughter to marry rich; so, after telling his boastful story, he waited with some confidence for her reply.
She drew herself erect to her stateliest height, and if scorn could have killed, the lightnings of her dark eyes would have stretched him dead at her aristocratic feet.
"You contemptible villain!" she exclaimed, angrily.
"Madame!"
"You perjured wretch! You cowardly wife-deserter! You escaped criminal! You persecutor of innocence! You—you—fiend!" concluded Mrs. Fitzgerald, losing her temper in her righteous indignation and piling opprobrious epithets one upon another in the white heat of her wrath.
Startled, cowed by this most unexpected onslaught, the wretch could only cower in pallid amazement before the lady as she continued her scathing denunciation.