Tell them that so long as
I live It will never willingly speak to one of them again.
"I was afraid you'd take it like that," he remarked dolefully.
"Take it like that!" she repeated in fierce scorn. "How else could
a woman hear such news? How else do you suppose she could feel to
be told that she had been hoodwinked, and kept from her duty and a
man's heart very likely broken, to save the respectability of a
worn-out old family. Oh, how could they have dared to do it? How
could they have dared to do it?"
"It was a beastly mistake," he admitted.
A whirlwind of scorn seemed to sweep over her. She could keep still
no longer. She walked up and down the little room. Her hands were
clenched, her eyes flashing.
"To tell me that he was dead - to let him live out the rest of his
poor life in exile and alone! Did they think that I didn't care?
Cecil," she exclaimed, suddenly turning and facing him, "I always
loved my father! You may think that I was too young to remember
him - I wasn't, I loved him always. When I grew up and they told
me of his disgrace I was bitterly sorry, for I loved his memory
- but it made no difference. And all the time it was a weak, silly
lie! They let him come out, poor father, without a friend to speak
to him and they hustled him out of the country.
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