‘Pshaw! pshaw! I had made up my mind. I was full of anger against Eve. I would not have taken her into my house had I met her. Fine scandals I should have had with her there! Better let her run and disappear in the mud, than come muddy into my parlour and besmirch all the furniture and me with it, and perhaps damage the business. These children of mine have eaten sour grapes, and the parent’s teeth are set on edge. It all comes’—the old man brought his fist down on the table—’of my accursed folly in bringing strange blood into the house, and now the chastisement is on me. Are you come back to live with me, Jasper? Will you help me again in the mill?’
‘Never again, father, never,’ answered the young man, standing up. ‘Never, after what I have just heard. I shall do what I can to find my poor sister, Eve Jordan’s mother. It is a duty—a duty your neglect has left to me; a duty hard to take up after it has been laid aside for seventeen years; a duty betrayed for a sum of money.’
‘Pshaw!’ The old man put his hands in his pockets, and walked about the room. He was shrunk with age; his eagle profile was without beauty or dignity.
Jasper followed him with his eye, reproachfully, sorrowfully.
‘Father,’ he said, ‘it seems to me as if that money was hush-money, and that you, by taking it, had brought the blood of your child on your own head.’
‘Blood! Fiddlesticks! Blood! There is no blood in the case. If she chose to run, how was I to stop her? Blood, indeed! Red raddle!’
[CHAPTER XXX.]
BETRAYAL.