“Geoffrey?” he said, in a doubtful tone, going close up to the young man.
“No, sir; Everet Mapleson, if you please.” replied the young man, haughtily, as with a mighty effort he braced himself for the encounter.
“By Heaven, it is!” August Huntress hoarsely exclaimed, and recoiling as if he had been struck a heavy blow. “What—what is the meaning of this?”
“It means that your daughter has become my wife instead of marrying Geoffrey Dale, as everybody supposed she was going to do.”
Mrs. Huntress sprang up with a faint shriek at this.
“No, no!” she cried, “that cannot be.”
Then, as she peered closely into his face, and realised the truth of the fearful disclosure, she tottered feebly toward her husband, moaning:
“Oh, August! he has practiced a terrible deception upon us, and it will surely kill Gladys.”
She was almost as helpless as the unconscious girl herself, and her husband was forced to put her into a rocker that stood near him, simply because he, too, was so weakened and unmanned by what he had heard that he was unable to support her.
But a terrible wrath began to rise within him; with it came a false kind of strength, and turning toward the wolf who had thus stolen into his household, he commanded, in a fearful voice: