“I gave her the opportunity, and she made her own choice, saying she freely forgave the wrongs committed against her, but her mother’s she could never forget.  If I had asked of Heaven the keenest punishment within the range of vengeance, it seems to me none could exceed the wretchedness of the man who, owning my darling for his child, is yet debarred from her love, her reverence, her confidence, and the precious charm of her continual presence.  My sweet, tender, perfect daughter!  The one true heart in all the wide world that loves and clings to me.  You forsook and disowned me, repudiated your vows, offered them elsewhere, making unto yourself strange new gods; profaning the altar, where other images should have stood.  The banker’s daughter, and the Laurance heiress she bore you, are entitled to what remains of your fickle selfish heart, and I trust that the two who supplanted my baby and me will suffice for your happiness in the future as in the past.  Into my own and my darling’s life you can enter no more.  ’Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.  Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?’ You deem me relentless and vindictive?  Think of all the grey, sunless, woeful existence I showed you behind the footlights not many nights since, and censure me if you can.  There is no pious resignation in my proud soul for indeed ’there are chastisements that do not chasten; there are trials that do not purify, and sorrows that do not elevate; there are pains and privations that harden the tender heart, without softening the stubborn will.’  Of such are the sombre wrap and woof of my ill-starred life.  When you reach New York Mr. Erle Palma, who is my counsel, will acquaint you with the course he deems it best to pursue.”

She looked calm and stately as the Ludovisian Juno, and quite as lovely, in her pale pride.

“Minnie, do not part from me in anger.  Oh, my wife, let me fold you in my arms once more!  And once, just once, I pray you, let me kiss you!  Are you not my own?”

She recoiled a step, her brown eyes lightened, and her words fell crisp as icicles: 

“Since I was a bride, three weeks a wife, since you pressed them last, no man’s lips have touched mine.  I hold them too sacred to that dear buried past to be submitted to a pressure less holy—­to be profaned by those of another woman’s husband.  Only my daughter kisses my lips.  Yours are soiled with perjury, and belong to the wife and child of your choice.  Go, pay your vows, be true at last to something.  Good-bye.”

He came closer, but her pitiless chill face repulsed him.  Seizing her beautiful hand, white and cold as marble, he lifted it, but the flash of the diamonds smote his heart like a heavy flail.

“The death’s head that you gave me as a bridal token!  Is there not a fatality even in symbols?  Upon my wedding ring stands the cinerary urn that soon sepulchred my peace, my hopes.  A mockery so exquisite could not have been accidental, and faithfully that grinning skeleton has walked with me.  The ghastly coat of arms of Laurance.”