“How do you know she is dead?” was the quiet question.
“How do I know, you vile hag? She died at Naples, thirteen years ago. I was with her only a few hours before her death. The next time I went to see her they told me she was dead and buried.”
“Ah! but what became of the child she left for you to take charge of?”
She bent forward and gazed eagerly into his face, as if she would read his very soul.
“Curse you, it’s none of your business! I’m sure I don’t know why I stand here parleying with such as you.”
A bright flush spread itself over the woman’s pale face at this taunt, while her lips quivered with suppressed rage.
“Stop!” she said, sternly, as he turned to go. “Stop, you fiend in human form, and give an account of yourself. It is my business, and I will know. It is true your sister was sick and destitute in the city of Naples. It is also true that when she heard of your arrival there she sent to you for assistance. She felt there was no help on earth for her, and she wanted to be reconciled to the only living member of her family before she went the way of all the earth. She also needed food and medicines, but most of all she wanted to give you her child, her bright and beauteous boy, to educate and rear, so that he might never feel the curse and sting of poverty and shame. You obeyed the summons. But how did you comfort her? You swore at her; you taunted and reviled her; you cursed her with the bitterest curses your vile heart could invent, and your lips utter; and when she prayed for a little love and forgiveness, you turned a deaf ear to her entreaties. Ah! cannot you hear her now pleading for her boy, that you would not leave him to the cold mercies of strangers? Cannot you see her now as she quivered in her anguish when you swore that you would not be disgraced by such as he? Are your dreams never haunted by that white, drawn face, by a wasted hand clutching yours, and a trembling voice begging, pleading for her one earthly treasure? Does not a phantom hover around your couch at night? I think there does. You look as if your whole life had been passed amid ghostly shadows.
“But to my story. A week after you left your only sister to suffer and die alone—a stranger in a strange land—you sought her again; your hard heart relented a little. Tardy repentance! They told you she was dead and buried. With a curse, and not even inquiring where her body was laid, you asked for her boy and took him away with you. That, Ralph Moulton, was the only good deed you ever did in your life. But has it continued to be a good deed? How have you kept your trust? Is it well, or would it have been better that he had died also, than that you should have taken him to rear in a poisoned atmosphere? I ask you, Ralph Moulton, where is that boy—where is he whom you have named for yourself, but who was christened Ralph Ellerton?”
The wicked man stood gazing at her, as if an avenging angel had smitten him, while she related these incidents of his past life. A look of blank amazement and fear covered his face; his knees knocked together, and when he tried to speak his ashen lips refused to move.
At length he managed to articulate: