"I _have_ the power, what should withhold me!"
"Oh, many things. Your daughter, for instance!"
"You interrupt me, sir. I was about to say your daughter has given me some rather unequivocal proofs of her love, and they would become unpleasantly public, you know, if her father insisted upon dragging me before the world. Your daughter, sir, must be my shield and buckler, I never desire a better or fairer."
Here a noise broke from the conservatory, and the silk curtain shook violently, but as it was spring time, and with open doors for the wind to circulate through, this did not seem extraordinary. Still, Mr. Hurst looked anxiously around, and Jameson cast a careless glance that way.
It was very painful, nay withering to his proud heart, but Mr. Hurst was determined to lay open the black nature of that man before his child; he knew that she suffered, that it was torture that he inflicted, but nevertheless she could be redeemed in no other way, and he remained firm as a rock.
"So, in order to deter me from a just act, you would use my daughter's attachment as a threat; you would drag her name before the world, that it might be blasted with your own! Is this what I am to understand?"
"Well, something very like it, I must confess."
Mr. Hurst arose. "I have done with you, Herbert Jameson," he said, with austere dignity. "Go, your presence is oppressive! So young and so deep a villain, even I did not believe you so terribly base. Go, I have done with you!"
Jameson did not move, but sat twisting the tassel of his cane between his thumb and finger. He did not look full at Mr. Hurst, for there was something in his eye that quelled even his audacity; but when he spoke, it was without any outward agitation, though his miscreant limbs shook, and the heart trembled in his bosom.
"Mr. Hurst," he said, "I do not know how far you have used past transactions to terrify me, but I assure you that any blow aimed at me will recoil on yourself. But this is not enough, you have told me to leave your roof forever--and so I will; but first let my wife be informed that I await her pleasure here. I take her with me, and that before you can have an opportunity to poison her mind against her husband."
"Your wife! Your wife!" Mr. Hurst could only master these words, and they fell from his white lips in fragments. He looked wildly around toward the door, and at the young man, who stood there smiling at his agony.
