"How hard you are upon me, Isabel!"
"I have told you only facts."
"I know—I know; but have some pity for me now, since, at last, I have come to my senses; for in my heart I have an insatiable longing for this daughter who, if she is living, must embody some of the virtues of her mother, who—God help me!—is lost, lost to me forever!"
The man's voice died away in a hoarse whisper, while a heart-broken sob burst from his lips.
"Go, Gerald," said Mrs. Stewart, in a low, but not unkindly imperative tone; "it is better that this interview should terminate. The past is past—nothing can change it; but the future will be what we make it. Go, and if I ever hear from you again, let me know that your present contrition has culminated in a better life."
She turned abruptly from him and disappeared within her chamber, quietly shutting the door after her, while Gerald Goddard arose to "go" as he had been bidden.
As, with tottering gait and a pale, despairing face, he crossed the room and parted the draperies between the two pretty parlors, he found himself suddenly confronted by a woman so wan and haggard that, for an instant, he failed to recognize her.
"Idiot!" hissed Anna Correlli, through her pallid, tightly-drawn lips; "traitor! coward! viper!"
She was forced to pause simply because she was exhausted from the venom which she had expended in the utterance of those four expletives.
Then she sank, weak and faint, upon a chair, but with her eyes glittering like points of flame, fastened in a look of malignant hatred upon the astonished man.