“I would crush you this instant if I could; there is nothing of all the world’s ills too horrible for me to wish upon you, and I will yet be revenged upon you for what I have suffered this day. I will yet make you feel the power of my hate!” and he glanced darkly toward Editha as he said this.
Earle’s eyes involuntarily followed his look, and the bitterness of death seemed upon him as he realized that they two would have a life-long sorrow to bear.
A sudden fear startled him, as Mr. Dalton spoke, that he contemplated injury to her in order to carry out the revenge he meant to wreak upon him.
“You will be very careful what you do,” he said, with a sternness that cowed the man in spite of his bravado; “you will not forget that you occupy a very delicate position even now, and that I have it in my power to make your own future very uncomfortable.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Mr. Dalton, with glittering eyes.
“I mean that if I choose I can make you answerable to the law; for, while one wife was living, you married another, and are liable at any time to be prosecuted for bigamy.”
Sumner Dalton swore a fearful oath, his white face testifying to the dreadful punishment which anything of such a nature would be to him, while a low, heart-rending moan burst at the same moment from Editha.
CHAPTER XXXIV
“IS THERE NO WAY OF ESCAPE?”
Earle started at that sound. His mind was so intent upon dealing with the strange man who claimed to be his father that he had not considered how his words might wound Editha, and he now blamed himself severely for having allowed these disclosures to be made in her presence. What must the poor girl have suffered as she listened and realized her own position, and all the wrong of which her father was guilty?
He had proved that her father had been legally married to his mother, consequently he, who had hitherto been regarded as a child of dishonor, was now without taint, and entitled to one of the proudest positions in the world. But in the heat and excitement of explaining all this, he had not stopped to consider that his own glory must necessarily arise out of the ruins of her life.