"Pendleton!" she said, in an equally suppressed voice, "What, in God's name, are you doing here?""Dying, I reckon--sooner or later," he said grimly, "that's what they do here.""But--what," she went on hurriedly, still glancing over her shoulder as if she suspected some trick--"what has brought you to this?""YOU!" said the colonel, dropping back exhaustedly on his pillow.
"You and your daughter."
"I don't understand you," she said quickly, yet regarding him with stern rigidity. "You know perfectly well I have NO daughter. You know perfectly well that I've kept the word I gave you ten years ago, and that I have been dead to her as she has been to me.""I know," said the colonel, "that within the last three months Ihave paid away my last cent to keep the mouth of an infernal scoundrel shut who KNOWS that you are her mother, and threatens to expose her to her friends. I know that I'm dying here of an old wound that I got when I shut the mouth of another hound who was ready to bark at her two years after you disappeared. I know that between you and her I've let my old nigger die of a broken heart, because I couldn't keep him to suffer with me, and I know that I'm here a pauper on the State. I know that, Kate, and when I say it Idon't regret it. I've kept my word to YOU, and, by the Eternal, your daughter's worth it! For if there ever was a fair and peerless creature--it's your child!""And she--a rich woman--unless she squandered the fortune I gave her--lets you lie here!" said the woman grimly.
"She don't know it."
"She SHOULD know it! Have you quarreled?" She was looking at him keenly.
"She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, and Ihadn't the heart to tell her all."
"All? What does she know? What does this man know? What has been told her?" she said rapidly.