'You don't know the whole, David; if you did, even you would say he is the basest man living.'
Hallet pressed his teeth together; his eyes flashed fire, and he seemed about to spring upon me; but mastering his passion, he rose after a moment and extended his hand, saying: 'Come, Mr. Kirke, this is not the talk of old friends! Let us shake hands and forget it.'
'Never, sir! I took your hand for the last time when I left this counting-room, twenty years ago. I never touch it again! I shall tell that boy to-night that you are his father.'
'You will not do so imprudent a thing. I will do any thing for him—any thing you require. I promise you—on my honor,' and the stately head of the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co., sank into a chair and bent down his face like a criminal in the dock.
'I can not trust you,' I said, as I paced the room,
'You can, Edmund; he means it. He is sorry for the wrong he's done,' said the old book-keeper, in that mild, winning tone which had made me so love him in my boyhood.
'Well, let him prove that he means it; let him tell you all; let him tell you how much he has had to repent of!'
'I have told him all. I told him years ago.'
'Did you tell him how you cast off that poor girl? how for years on her knees she vainly plead for a paltry pittance to keep her child from starving and herself from sin? Did you tell him how you forced her on the street? how you drove her from you with curses, when she prayed you to save her from the pit of infamy into which you had plunged her? Did you tell him,' and I hissed the words in his ear, while he writhed on his seat in such agony as only the guilty can feel; 'how, at last, after all those wretched years, she died of starvation and disease, with all that mountain of sin on her soul, and all of it heaped on her by YOU!'
'Oh! no! I did not—could not tell him that! I did not know I had done that!' groaned the stately gentleman.