"There, mistress," said he. "I could have told them you was the lady, but they would not let a poor fellow get a word in edgeways." He retired with an obeisance.
Mary handed the bracelet to Julia, and then remained passive.
A dead silence fell upon them all, and a sort of horror crept over Mary Bartley at what must follow; but come what might, no power should induce her to say the word that should send Walter Clifford to jail for seven years.
Bartley came to her; she trembled, and her hands worked.
"What are you saying, you fool?" he whispered. "The lady that left the bracelet was there with a gentleman."
Then Bartley said, sternly, "Who was your companion?"
"You will say one thing," said Bartley, "or I shall have no mercy on you. Are you secretly married?"
Then a single word flashed across Mary's almost distracted mind--SELF-SACRIFICE. She held her tongue.
"Can't you speak? Are you a wife?" He now began to speak so loud in his anger that everybody heard it.
Mary crouched a little and worked her hands convulsively under the torture, but she answered with such a doggedness that evidently she would have let herself be cut to pieces sooner than said more.
Mary paused, and then, with iron doggedness, "I--don't--know."
This apparent insult to his common-sense drove Bartley almost mad. "You have given these cursed Cliffords a triumph over me," he cried; "you have brought shame to my door; but it shall never pass the threshold." Here the Colonel uttered a contemptuous snort. This drove Bartley wild altogether; he rushed at the Colonel, and shook his fist in his face. "You stand there sneering at my humiliation; now see the example I can make." Then he was down upon Mary in a moment, and literally yelled at her in his fury. "Go to your paramour, girl; go where you will. You never enter my door again." And he turned his back furiously upon her.
This terrible denunciation overpowered poor Mary's resolution; she clung to him in terror. "Oh, mercy, mercy, papa! I'll explain to _you_, have pity on your child!"
Bartley flung her so roughly from him that she nearly fell, "You are my child no more."
But at that moment in strode William Hope, looking seven feet high, and his eyes blazing. "Liar and hypocrite," he roared, "_she never was your child_!" Then, changing to a tone of exquisite love, and stretching out both his hands to Mary, "SHE IS MINE!"