“My God!”
“Ay, curse you. For have you not turned to poison the life whose blessing you were? Have you not dragged down my pride to the depths of shame? Have you not made your father’s name a by-word for the lips of the idle? Then curse you, Mabel Clifdon.”
And Philip Mordaunt paused, exhausted by his own violence; paused, with lips trembling, with the hot blood mounting even to the white hairs brushed from his massive forehead, with his strong form shattered as a reed by the tempest of passion.
“Has not my agony washed out the blot of my transgression? Do I not grovel at your feet, not for the aid I dare not hope, but for the pardon God gives the vilest? Have I not suffered till my life has been to me a torture and a curse, and a long remorse? Is it not enough, my father?”
“May your lips wither when you speak the word, ‘Father.’ Out upon you!”
“Merciful God!”
“Away! away! Out of the home you have forsaken! Away from the threshold you pollute! May the memory of the mother murdered by your ingratitude, of the childless and wifeless old man whose love you have turned to hate, ever cling around your heart; ever poison, like a million of curses, the well-spring of your life! away!”
But she lay there, buried in the long folds of her hair, the raven masses that he had so often smoothed and played with, lay there like a thing without sense or motion, save for the prolonged and bitter sobs that burst forth at intervals, as though the very heart was cleft asunder and breathing out its life.
And before her stood the stern old man, with his arms crossed upon his broad chest, his pale lip compressed, and rigid as though cast in iron, and his eye turned immovably on that prostrate form.
Around him were the evidences of his wealth. The marble fountain that tossed its white spray, and rang forth its silver peel amid the rare and tropical plants, whose perfume stole through the open blinds of the conservatory; the rich drapery of the massive windows; the crimson of the gilded and carved coaches; the deep and glowing dyes of the thick carpets; the soft light of the crystal lamp that swung to and fro from the frescoed ceiling, and the only child of the rich man crouched amid the luxuries that had once been hers, in her mean and faded garb, dusty and toil-worn, unmantled, save for the dark glory of those redundant tresses.