“Tut! Your crazy obstinacy drives me to it,” her father answered impatiently, but with perfect control. “Oh, you need have no fear. There is no legal shame to you. But there is that which will hit you harder, I think.”
“Father! What are you saying?”
Something of the man’s meaning was growing upon her. Old hints and innuendoes against her mother were recalled by his words. Her throat parched while she watched the relentless face of this man who was still her father.
“Saying? You know the story of my blindness. You know I spent three years visiting nearly every eye-doctor in Europe. But what you don’t know, and shall know, is that I returned home to Jamaica at the end of that time to find myself the father of a three-days’-old baby girl.” The man’s teeth were clenched, rage and pain distorted his face, rendering his sightless stare a hideous thing. “Yes,” he went on, but now more to himself, “I returned home to that, and in time to hear the last words your mother uttered in life; in time to feel—feel her death-struggles.” He mouthed his words with unmistakable relish, and relapsed into silence.
Diane fell back with a bitter cry. The cry roused her father.
“Well?” he continued. “You’ll give this man up—now?”
For some minutes there was no answer. The girl sat like a statue carved in dead white stone; and the expression of her face was as stony as the mould of her features. Her blood was chilled; her brain refused its office; and her heart—it was as though that fount of life lay crushed within her bosom. Even the man lying sick on the bed beside her had no meaning for her.
“Well?” her father demanded impatiently. “You are going to give Tresler up now?”