"Hearken, my leddy!" barked old Fraser, "One more word, and I'll
have the gardener put ye off the premises! The girl ye speak of is
young and strong. She'll have just what the Court gives her, and
what her father laid out for her, and I'll work my will, and I'll
do his will. Ye're speaking to no fule, here now! Take yere money
and yere letters, and bring me the maid, or I'll bundle ye both
in a jiffey into the Queen's highway. I'll have none but my own
servants here--now!"
Then Justine Delande, without another word, stepped forward, and,
seizing the pen, signed her receipt for wages due, in silence. She
defiantly gathered up her withheld letters and papers. She returned
in a few moments with the maid, whose ox-like eyes glowed in the
sudden joy of a return to Switzerland. For the ranz des vaches was
now ringing in the stout peasant girl's ears. "There, that's all,
now!" rasped the old man, when the maid had gathered up her dole.
"The butler will go down to town with ye and see ye safe, and he
will leave word at the bank to pay yere checks. I keep no siller
here. It's a lonely house." And the dead tyrant worked his will
through the living one, as his stony heart had laid out the future.
Justine Delande faced the old miser pedant as she indignantly
cried: "God protect and keep the poor orphan who has drifted out of
one hell on earth into another! Your dead brother robbed her of a
mother's love, and you--you old vampire--you would bury her alive!
She shall know yet her dead mother's love, and--her brutal father's
shame!"
Before the excited woman could select another period of flowing
invective from her thronging emotions, the gaunt old scholar had
pushed her out into the hall and slid a bolt upon his door, with a
vicious click.
Pages:
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353