Viola dragged herself up from her knees and sank uninvited into a chair, turning her pale, startled face upon the resentful speaker, who continued, angrily:
“Why should you come here and force yourself upon us when we hate you for your cruelty to our poor Rolfe?”
“Yes, why?” echoed Mrs. Maxwell, dully.
Viola cried out in a strained voice:
“But you accuse me falsely! I did not refuse to see Rolfe. I did not know he came that night to my father’s house. I never sent him the cruel messages you repeat, for I had no other thought than to be his true and faithful wife whenever he claimed me, so help me Heaven!”
They saw all in a minute how cruelly Rolfe had been deceived and sent away with a broken heart.
Viola had not been false and fickle, as they believed, but the victim of an angry father’s plot to separate her from her husband—a plot that had succeeded all too well.
Rolfe lay in his untimely grave, and as for her, they read on her wasted features and in her despairing eyes the story of a late remorse more bitter than death.
“I understand everything now,” she added, faintly. “We were the victims of an angry father’s despotic will. A prisoner in my own home, I never knew of my husband’s call that night, nor of the cruel falsehoods he was told. No wonder he never wrote to me. Oh, God! how bitter to think he died believing me ungrateful and untrue. Pray Heaven, he knows better now!” and she buried her face in her hands, her slight form shaking with emotion.
At that moving sight Mae’s gentle heart began to melt with pity and forgiveness. She hesitated a moment, then rushed to Viola’s side and clasped her white arms around her neck.