She spoke as if she could have wished that every word should cut to his very heart; it was plain that the fact thus announced had somehow touched a wound of rankling bitterness in her own. She went on, gazing fixedly at him with the most frigid coldness, "This Lilias is the daughter of your favorite brother, is she not? I presume she will be the fortunate individual on whom your choice will probably fall. Henceforward, then, it may be a pleasant subject of speculation for me, whether this girl, whom you have never so much as seen, will vouchsafe a crust of bread to your widow, and a garret to shelter her in the home she shared with you."
He writhed under these bitter words, and wrung his withered hands. He spoke with moaning voice, like that of a child in pain—"Catherine, Catherine, it is yourself who have forced me to it. You know how, living, all that I have is yours,—my whole wealth utterly at your command; dying, as soon I must, how thankful would I leave all I possess to you; yes, thankful should I be to think that from the very grave my love had still the power to benefit and bless you—if you would but give me the pledge I ask. You know how from this overwhelming affection which I have given you these long, interminable years, there has been born a hate deeper, deeper even than its parent love, for it constrains me rather to endure the bitterness of your reproaches, the agony of leaving you destitute on earth, than consent that even one inch of my property, one penny of my wealth, should pass from your hands to the offspring of the man I have abhorred."
"Yes! and to have so abhorred him, the best and noblest of his kind—and now to hate his helpless child—I tell you, you can have no heart of man within you, but the very nature of a tiger, cruel and crafty. A deadly hate it must be, truly, which can pursue a man into his very rest of death, and wound the poor corpse in the person of his son. Oh! how could you abhor him—you who have seen him in his living grace and goodness?"
"Because he loved you," almost shrieked the old man; "and oh, Catherine, my wife, so long and vainly dear, because you loved him also."
"I did, and do," she exclaimed, weeping passionate tears; "oh! how I love him still, my first, my only choice, the husband of my youth, the father of my child. You thought I should forget him, did you, in the midst of all this luxury? I tell you I love his green and narrow grave, with the dead ashes it contains, ten thousandfold better than this palace home and the living husband within it." The withering scorn with which she uttered these last words seemed to madden him.
"What, you doat on his very grave," he said, stamping his foot, "and by the side of it you would have starved, a penniless widow, had I not taken you."
Her breast heaved with anger—"And should I not have been well content to starve, rather than eat that bitter bread which I bought with the title of your wife: but the child, his child and mine, would have perished, or lived in misery; and for his sake, for my lost husband's sake, I married you, that I might the better cherish the poor son he left me."
"Oh! why will you torture me? It is true, that, from the days of our first meeting, you have fostered within me the unconquerable hate which, for my agony and yours, has grown mightier than the mighty love I bear you. It is by this wanton lavishing upon him, and now upon his son, of the tenderness I sought with a life's idolatry to gain, which has curdled the very blood within my heart, and makes me feel that I would rather leave you to languish in the worst of poverty than furnish you the means of blessing him with all life's treasures, and dwelling with him in delight, when I can no longer claim your presence, by the wife's obedience, if not alas! alas! by the woman's love. No, though my resolution has made our life a miserable struggle, yet am I immovable in this—I never will go down into the dungeon of the grave, and know that over my impotent dust the son of my rival is revelling in all my wealth, dwelling in my home, making you happy, as you never were when at my side, because he has the likeness of his father in his face. Already is it torture to me to know he is within these walls; and often I have thought that, madly as I love you, it was a dear-bought pleasure to have you as my wife, when the condition on which you came to me was the presence of this hateful boy. Oh, Catherine, be advised, give him up—strange object of affection, truly!"—and he laughed bitterly—"not to starve—he is your son—I do not ask it; but to go and live upon a pittance somewhere out of my sight and thoughts. Then give me this easy pledge, that he never shall inherit Randolph Abbey, and I will have no other heir but you. With your own hands, if you will, you then may drive out all these children of my brothers; I care not what becomes of them; and here you shall be a very queen, possessor of the whole fair lands for ever."
He had given her time to quell her emotion in this earnest speech, and he shuddered as he met the look of impassible and contemptuous determination with which she answered him—"Why will you weary me with proposals which I have a hundred times rejected, and will reject again, as often as it shall please you to amuse yourself by making them. I require no more of these detailed assurances that you design to be, as you have ever been, my bitter enemy."
"Catherine, is it to be an enemy to worship you as I have done?"