"Stand aside!"
"I will not make a way for you to go," continued the old woman. "If you venture to go away until I have spoken, I will run after you and shriek it forth in the churchyard where all may hear. Will you stay now?"
He made no further attempt to force his way past her.
"You thought that with your money you could buy everything—even my child's heart; and when you found you could not, then you took her poor heart, and trampled on it; you spurned it; and you trod it again and again under your cursed foot till all the blood was crushed out of it." Her eyes glowed, there was the madness of long-retained and fostered hate in her heart. "You made a wreck of her life, and now your own child spurns you, and tramples on all your fatherly love, laughs at your ambition, mocks all your schemes, and flings back your love in your face as something too tainted, too base, to be worth a groat. Ah, ha! I have prayed to see this day. I see it, and am glad. Now go."
She stepped on one side, and the Squire walked down the church. In the porch he found Bessie, or rather Bessie found him, for he did not observe her. She put her hand on his arm, and looked earnestly, supplicatingly into his eyes. He shook off her hand, and walked on.
Half the congregation—nearly all the men, and a good many of the women, were in the churchyard in groups, talking. Fox was with Anthony, but as soon as the Squire appeared, he fell from him and drew back near one of the trees of the church avenue, and fixed his keen observant eye on the old man. But every other eye was on him as well. Cleverdon came slowly, and with that mixture of pomposity and dignity which was usual with him, but which was this day exaggerated, down the avenue, he nodded and saluted with his hat the acquaintances whom he observed, but he said no word of greeting to any one. Presently he came opposite his son, then he stayed his foot, looked at him, and their eyes met. Not a muscle was relaxed in his face, his eye was cold and stony. Then he turned his head away, and walked on at the same leisurely pace.
The blood boiled up in Anthony's arteries. A film passed over his sight and obscured it, then he turned and went down another path, and abruptly left the graveyard.