Inclosed was a check for two hundred pounds and a little slip of paper with a few penciled lines in Sister Teresa’s handwriting.
“For the love of Heaven do not send or come—it would be worse than useless, he is nearly beside himself with anger; your maid interceded for you with tears, and has been sent away with her wages. No one dares to say a word.”
Oh, fathers! provoke not your children to wrath. It was that hard, cruel letter that changed Nea’s repentance to unrelenting bitterness.
Instinctively she felt the iron of her father’s will enter into her soul. In a moment she understood, as she had never done before, the hardness and coldness of his nature, the inflexibility of his purpose; as well might she dash herself against a rock as expect forgiveness. Well, she was his own child, her will was strong too, and in the anguish of her despair she called upon her pride to support her, she leaned her fainting woman’s heart upon that most rotten of reeds.
He had disinherited her, his only child; he had flung her away from him. Well, she would defy him; and then she remembered his ill-health, their projected trip to Pau, their happy schemes for the future, till her heart felt almost broken, but for all that she stood like a statue, crushing down the pain in the very stubbornness of her pride.
Ah, Nea, unhappy Nea! poor motherless, willful girl; well may she look round her with that scared, hunted look.
Was this her future home, these poor rooms, this shabby furniture? Belgrave House closed to her forever. But as she looked round with that fixed miserable glance, why did the tears suddenly dim her eyes?
Her glance had fallen on Maurice, still sitting motionless with his hands before his eyes—Maurice her husband; yes, there he sat, the man whom her own willfulness had dragged to the brink of ruin, whose faith and honor she had tempted, whose honest purpose she had shaken and destroyed, who was so crushed with remorse for his own weakness that he dared not look her in the face; and as she gazed at him, Nea’s whole heart yearned with generous pity over the man who had brought her to poverty, but whom she loved and would love to her life’s end.
And Maurice, sitting crushed with that awful remorse, felt his hands drawn down from his face, and saw Nea’s beautiful face smiling at him through her tears, felt the smooth brown head nestle to his breast, and heard the low sobbing words—
“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, till death us do part, have I not promised, Maurice? Take me to your heart and comfort me with your love, for in all the world I have no one but you—no one but you!”