Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/581

Rh with grief, and rage, and helpless wonder. I have never seen a man so thoroughly agitated, but I have also never seen a man exert such an effort at self-control. He sat down; and then, after a moment—"What have I done?" he asked.

Mr. Ingram walked away to the window, and stood closely examining the texture of the drawn curtains. "You have done nothing, my dear Mr. Crawford," said Mrs. Ingram. "We accuse you of nothing. We are very reasonable; I'm sure you can't deny that, whatever you may say. Mr. Ingram explained everything in the letter. We have simply thought better of it. We have decided that we can't part with our child for the present. She is all we have, and she is so very young. We ought never to have consented. But you urged us so, and we were so good-natured. We must keep her with us."

"Is that all you have to say?" asked Crawford.

"It seems to me it is quite enough," said Mrs. Ingram.

Crawford leaned his head on his hands. "I must have done something without knowing it," he said at last. "In heaven's name tell me what it is, and I will do penance and make reparation to the uttermost limit."

Mr. Ingram turned round, rolling his expressionless eyes in quest of virtuous inspiration. "We can't say that you have done anything; that would be going too far. But if you had, we would have forgiven you."

"Where is Elizabeth?" Crawford again demanded.

"In her own apartment," said Mrs. Ingram majestically.

"Will you please to send for her?"

"Really, sir, we must decline to expose our child to this painful scene."

"Your tenderness should have begun farther back. Do you expect me to go away without seeing her?"

"We request that you will."

Crawford turned to me. "Was such a request ever made before?" he asked, in a trembling voice.

"For your own sake," said Mrs. Ingram, "go away without seeing her."

"For my own sake? What do you mean?"

Mrs. Ingram, very pale, and with her thin lips looking like the blades of a pair of scissors, turned to her husband. "Mr. Ingram," she said, "rescue me from this violence. Speak out—do your duty."

Mr. Ingram advanced with the air and visage of the stage manager of a theater, when he steps forward to announce that the favorite of the public will not be able to play. "Since you drive us so hard, sir, we must tell the painful truth. My poor child would rather have had nothing said about it. The truth is that she has mistaken the character of her affection for you. She has a high esteem for you, but she does not love you."

Crawford stood silent, looking with formidable eyes from the father to the mother. "I must insist upon seeing Elizabeth," he said at last.

Mrs. Ingram gave a toss of her head. "Remember it was your own demand!" she cried, and rustled stiffly out of the room.

We remained silent; Mr. Ingram sat slowly rubbing his knees, and Crawford, pacing up and down, eyed him askance with an intensely troubled frown, as one might eye a person just ascertained to be liable to some repulsive form of dementia. At the end of five minutes, Mrs. Ingram returned, clutching the arm of her daughter, whom she pushed into the room. Then followed the most extraordinary scene of which I have ever been witness.

Crawford strode toward the young girl, and seized her by both hands; she let him take them, and stood looking at him. "Is this horrible news true?" he cried. "What infernal machination is at the bottom of it?"

Elizabeth Ingram appeared neither more nor less composed than on most occasions; the pink and white of her cheeks was as pure as usual, her golden tresses were as artistically braided, and her eyes showed no traces of weeping. Her face was never expressive, and at this moment it indicated neither mortification nor defiance. She met her lover's eyes with the exquisite blue of her own pupils, and she looked as beautiful as an angel. "I am very sorry that we must separate," she said. "But I have mistaken the nature of my affection for you. I have the highest esteem for you, but I do not love you."

I listened to this, and the clear, just faintly trembling, child-like tone in which it was uttered, with absorbing wonder. Was the girl the most consummate of actresses, or had she, literally, no more sensibility than an expensive wax doll? I never discovered, and she has remained to this day, one of the unsolved mysteries of my experience. I incline to believe that she was, morally, absolutely nothing but the hollow reed through which her mother spoke, and that she was really no more cruel now than she