His voice sank almost to a whisper, as he asked ‘Then what I have heard is true?’
The girl seemed absolutely stunned.
‘Be it so. Now you know the cause of my illness. Look at me. Look at this face, scored with wrinkles; these hollow cheeks, and this frame, broken down by premature old age. Look at them, I say, and you will see but a faint image of the utter, hopeless waste that has been going on in my heart.’
The girl made an attempt to speak; sank on the floor; and clasping his knees, pressed her head against them, and sobbed aloud. But Rust moved not. There was no trace of compassion in either tone or manner, as he continued: ‘From your childhood, until you were grown up, you were the person for whose welfare I toiled. I labored and strove for you; there was not a thing that I did, not a thought that I ever harbored, which had not your happiness for its aim; and to your love and devotion I looked for my reward; and as I brooded over my own guilty life, blackened as it was with the worst of crimes, I thought that it was some palliation to be the parent of one pure and spotless as you were. Well, you turned out as hundreds of others have done, and my labor was lost. I loved you as never child was loved; and in proportion as my love once was great, so now is my hate and scorn!’
[!-- original reads 487 --]‘Oh! my God!’ gasped the girl. She sank down as if crushed. Rust looked at her unmoved, and did not stir to assist her. She raised her hands to him, and said in a supplicating tone: ‘Father! as you hope for mercy, hear me!’
‘If I received not mercy from my own child,’ said Rust, sternly, ‘to whom can I look for it? I hope for it no where; I ask for it no where; I am at bay to the whole world.’
One of those dark, withering expressions which had once been so common to his features, but which his anguish had for the last few days in a great measure banished from them, swept across his face.
The girl wrung her hands, as she received his harsh answer. At last she said, in a broken voice: ‘Father, I am sadly guilty; but hear me, for God’s sake, do hear me!’
At that moment, the door was opened, and the officer’s head was thrust in.
‘Time’s up.’