AC dBooks

Isn't that what it
all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that
you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this
man's . . . bastard?"
And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted his
arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek.
The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-fold
worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When my
mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me so
tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths of
shame.
I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next moment
Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, as
before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing outside the door.
But even that did not serve to restrain him.
"No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy
to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you shall!
And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your father.


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