“All the same, Miss Brewster, your father was married—it was a secret marriage, too—three years previous to his union with Miss Porter. It occurred during the last year of his college course in New Haven. Mrs. Brewster can produce prima facie evidence of the fact in the form of old letters and a certificate, and I have also seen the record of the marriage license in the city archives.”
“Why, then, did not this woman come forward at the time of papa’s death, and contest his will? Why has she waited all these months?” questioned Allison, with white, quivering lips.
“Simply because I have not allowed her to do so; because I have been striving to protect your interests—trying to temporize with her,” said Mr. Hubbard, with a would-be effective sigh. “She would have been content with half, and I could then have saved the other half for you, if you had been reasonable and listened to my suit. I could thus have protected you from every ill; indeed, I never would have wounded you by allowing you to suspect anything of what has been revealed to you to-day. You perceive what you have brought upon yourself by defying me.”
Allison lifted a death-white face to the speaker, but there was a gleam in her eyes that made him quail before her.
“Mr. John Hubbard, I would rather be a beggar in the streets—I would rather be a street sweeper, earning a penny at a time, than be the wife of such a man as you,” she said with deliberate scorn. “You are cold, cruel, unprincipled, or you would never have conducted yourself as you have to-day; you would never have sought to be revenged upon one who was helplessly consigned to your power because, not loving you, she refused to marry you.”
“Very well. You have sealed your own doom. Henceforth I shall act in the interests of Mr. Brewster’s legal wife and daughter.”