“I suppose that when you are ready you will tell me what this means--why you have turned against me in this way,” he began with a simulation of anger. And then changing to a conciliatory tone: “Tell me what it is that troubles you, Zee. I had hoped that you were very happy here. I had flattered myself through the summer that ours was a happy home. But if there is any way in which I have erred I am heartily sorry.”
He bowed his head as though from the weight of his penitence, but he was glad to escape her eyes. When he looked up again, he found her gaze still bent upon him. He picked up the fallen pen and placed it on the table beside the paper which he had asked her to sign.
“You are a tremendous fraud,” she said, with a smile in which there was no mirth or pity. “You are immensely clever, and I suppose that because I have some of your evil blood in me, I am a little bit clever, too.”
He rose in real anger and cried hoarsely:
“Zee! You forget yourself; you must be mad!”
“I am growing sane,” she answered. “I have been mad for a year, but my reason has come back to me. I do not forget myself or that you are my father; but I remember, too, that you are an evil man and that you drove my mother into her grave. You killed her, with your pettiness and your hypocrisy; you are just as much her murderer as though you had slain her with a knife. But I beg of you, do not think that you can play the same tactics with me. I don’t ask for the money that you have squandered. It isn’t your being a thief that I hate; it’s your failure to be a man! It’s the thought that you would betray the trust of the dead--of my dead mother--that’s what I hate you for!”
“You are either a fool or mad. You shall not talk to me so! You have been listening to lies--infamous lies. Rodney Merriam has been poisoning your mind against me. I shall hold him responsible; I shall make him suffer. He has gone too far, too far. I shall have the law upon him.”
She had rested her arm on the mantel-shelf, and she now leaned upon it, but did not draw away from him as his eyes blazed into hers.
“You had better sit down,” she said without flinching. “I suppose you used to talk to my mother this way and that you succeeded in frightening her. But I am not afraid of you, Ezra Dameron. If you think you can browbeat me into signing your deed, you have mistaken me. I was never less scared in my life.”