'Well?' said my mother, in a tone whose velvet softness withered me.
'Well, mother, she is in all things the very opposite of her father. This very night she told me'—and I was actually on the verge of repeating poor Winifred's prattle about her resembling her mother, and not her father (for already my brain had succumbed to the force of the oncoming fever, and the catastrophe I was dreading made of me a frank and confiding child).
'Well?' said my mother, in a voice softer and more velvety still.
'What did she tell you?'
That tone ought to have convinced me of the folly, the worse than folly, of saying another word to her.
'But I can conquer her,' I thought; 'I can conquer her yet. When she comes to know all the piteousness of Winifred's case, she must yield.'
'Yes, mother,' I cried, 'she is in all things the very opposite of Tom. She has such a horror of sacrilege; she has such a dread of a crime and a curse like this; she has such a superstitious belief in the power of a dead man's curse to cling to the delinquent's offspring, that, if she knew of what her father had done, she would go mad—raving mad, mother—she would indeed!' And I fell hack on the pillow exhausted.
'Well, Henry, and is this what you summoned me from my bed to tell me—that Wynne's daughter will most likely object to share the consequences of her father's crime? A very natural objection, and I am really sorry for her; but further than that I have certainly no affair with her.'
'But, mother, the body of her father lies beneath the débris on the shore; the ebbing tide may leave it exposed, and the poor girl, missing her father in the morning, will seek him perhaps on the shore and find him—find him with the proof of his crime on his breast, and know that she inherits the curse—my father's curse! Oh, think of that, mother—think of it. And you only can prevent it.'
For a few moments there was intense silence in the room. I saw that my mother was reflecting. At last she said:
'You say that Wynne's daughter told you something to-night. Where did you see her?'