It seemed as if she was an entirely different being from what she had been two hours previous, as if some terrible metamorphosis had taken place in her, destroying her identity and making her a stranger to even herself.
She was no longer Allison Brewster, the heiress to a vast fortune; she had no longer any right to the position she had always occupied. She did not know who she was, or—if this strange woman, who called herself Adam Brewster’s widow, demanded the uttermost farthing—how she was to live in the future, or find a home to shelter her.
“Oh, it is all a cruel mystery, and I do not know how to meet it!” the perplexed girl sighed, almost unconsciously voicing her thoughts.
“Yes, the events connected with your association with the Brewster family are mysterious, and it is doubtful if they will ever be solved,” responded her companion, a gleam of cruel satisfaction in his eyes in view of the evident suffering of his victim. “And,” he added, pressing the thorn yet more deeply into the wound, “it must seem hard to one reared as luxuriously as you have been to be reduced from affluence to abject poverty by a single blow.”
His cruelty stung her to the quick.
“It shall not be! I will not be so robbed!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I will claim that I have a right to at least some portion of the fortune which my father willed me. Surely no judge or jury would ever decree that that woman and her daughter are entitled to the whole. And I cannot quite understand your attitude in connection with their claims, Mr. Hubbard,” she added, with sudden thought. “Considering your position as my guardian, one would naturally suppose you would make a brave fight for me, rather than advocate their cause so earnestly.”
“I have already fought to the finish for you. I have spared no effort to win,” the man retorted significantly: “but, as I have already told you, you have sealed your own doom. I could have braved everything for my wife, and I would have won the victory; but when a girl tells a man that she loves a fellow he hates, and that she would rather be a beggar or a street-sweeper than marry him, her scorn has a tendency to produce a strong revulsion in his feelings. And now, my proud little beggar—for such you will be—you may go and starve, for all I care!” he concluded, with intense bitterness.
“I will not starve! I will defy you to the very end,” Allison cried spiritedly, as she again sprang to her feet and confronted her sworn foe with flashing eyes. “Oh, I am almost inclined to believe that this is some deep-laid plot to ruin me—some vile scheme of your own to drive me into a hateful marriage with you, or into poverty and obscurity as my only alternative. I have never trusted you, Mr. John Hubbard, and have wondered how papa could have put faith in you. I have long believed you to be tricky and capable of double-dealing. I have always felt that you had a hand in bringing that trouble upon Gerald. But truth and the right triumphed in his case, and you will be foiled in this. I am only a lonely girl. I know nothing about the quirks and quibbles of law; but I am inclined to doubt this story of yours regarding the woman whom you call Mrs. Brewster, in spite of the ‘proofs’ which you have shown me; and now I am going to prove to you that, even though I may have no Brewster blood in my veins, I have a spirit of which Adam Brewster need not be ashamed in the girl whom he reared as his daughter. Now, do your worst, Mr. Hubbard, and I will seek the best counsel in New York to fight against you!”
She was gloriously beautiful as she stood proudly facing her enemy. Her pose was proud and fearless, her cheeks were scarlet, and her beautiful eyes blazed with a fire which bespoke dauntless courage.
She seemed to have suddenly developed from a quiet, clinging, dependent schoolgirl into a strong, self-reliant woman, who was determined to do and dare all things to maintain her rights and preserve her heritage.