Her eyes widened and she leaned back against the lintel of the door, staring at him incredulously.
"Charity!" she echoed, in a whisper.
Perhaps he mistook her amazement at his performance for dismay caused by the sense of her own position, for, as she seemed to weaken before him, the strength of his own habit of dominance came back to him."Charity, madam!" he broke out, shouting intolerably."Charity, d'ye hear?
I was a friend of the man that made the money you and your grandfather squandered; I was a friend of Jonas Tabor, I say! That's why I was willing to support you for a year and over, rather than let a niece of his suffer.""`Suffer'!" she cried."`Support'! You sent me a hundred thousand francs!"The white splotches which had mottled Martin Pike's face disappeared as if they had been suddenly splashed with hot red."You go back to my house," he said."What I sent you only shows the extent of my--""Effrontery!" The word rang through the whole house, so loudly and clearly did she strike it, rang in his ears till it stung like a castigation.
It was ominous, portentous of justice and of disaster.There was more than doubt of him in it:
there was conviction.
He fell back from this word; and when he again advanced, Ariel had left the house.She had turned the next corner before he came out of the gate; and as he passed his own home on his way down-town, he saw her white dress mingling with his daughter's near the horse-block beside the fire, where the two, with their arms about each other, stood waiting for Sam Warden and the open summer carriage.
Judge Pike walked on, the white splotches reappearing like a pale rash upon his face.A yellow butterfly zigzagged before him, knee-high, across the sidewalk.He raised his foot and half kicked at it.