"I gave her up when I could have kept her to her word. I decided in favor of the girl's happiness against my own. I gave her up to you that you might make her happy. Those were the terms on which I gave her up to you, and what is the result? What is the result, I ask you? You have allowed another woman to take her place."
"Another woman?" said Oscar. "Is that the way you talk of her own sister--of Helga?"
"Sister or not, she has tortured Thora by every art her selfish soul could think of," said Magnus. "That's what she has done, and you have helped her, and the treasure I valued more than my life you have flung away."
Oscar made a cry of protest, but Magnus bore him down with a torrent of words such as never came from his silent lips before.
"Do you think I don't know what kind of life you led that poor unhappy child while you were away--you and the girl together? And now that her baby comes and her husband returns to her, as he must if he is a man, you let her sister's scheming heart rob her of her only happiness."
Again Oscar with his whitening lips did his best to laugh. "Magnus," he said, "it is impossible to be angry with you. Apparently you do not know that it was with the consent of the family and by the advice of the doctor that the child was taken from its mother!"
"Bah! Do you think I don't know who suggested it? ... Do you think that I don't see her object? Do you think I don't hear her pitiful pleas--the same as if I had listened to them! The little innocent is in danger of its life! It must come to her--she must take charge of it. Why? To bring you back to her feet--to attach you to her at any cost. And you like a fool fall into her plans--because you want to--because you don't know yourself or your wife or the woman that isn't worthy to tie her shoes."
Oscar winced under Magnus's words, for they cut him to the bone.
"Oscar," said Magnus again, "you will give the child back to the mother--it will be best, I promise you."
"I have my own opinion of what is best," said Oscar, bridling, "and if I think that for the time being mother and child are best apart----"