CHAPTER IX.
THAT FATAL SECRET.
He stood waiting for an answer, his hand clutching her shoulder with a violence of which he was not himself aware, until she cried out with the pain.
“Oh, you hurt me!”
He loosened his angry grasp and said, impatiently:
“Well, answer my question, then. What did you mean just now?”
“What have I said? What have I done?” she moaned, lifting up her heavy head and awfully blanched face.
“You have not forgotten?” he cried, incredulously.
She put her hand to her brow, shuddering.
“I have had some kind of a strange turn, but I think you asked me if I knew some one. Was it Harold Castello?”
“Yes—do you?”
“No, grandpapa, I have never heard that name in my life!” shuddered Violet.
“Then why did you call him such vile names—wretch, villain, monster, murderer, thief, perhaps, as I can scarcely remember all your choice epithets?” sarcastically.
“Did I say all that?” murmured Violet, in a sort of dismay. Then she caught her breath and said, more naturally: “It is not strange that I called him names, is it? I hate him, you know, because you are trying to force him on me for a husband.”
“You need not pour out a whole flood of billingsgate on a gentleman because he does you the honor to offer you his hand.”
“The honor? Oh, Heaven!” cried Violet, in deep disgust.
“Yes, the honor,” repeated Judge Camden, angrily. “Why, you can reign like a queen in that palace of his on beautiful Prairie avenue.”
“I would not cross its threshold for wealth untold!” she cried, obdurately.
“You mean to refuse his hand, then—to disobey my commands?”
“You may kill me if you choose, grandpapa, but you cannot coerce me into marrying that man!”
Her eyes blazed into his, blue and defiant, but he restrained his impulse to strike her again and said, angrily:
“Perhaps you think you will elope with Cecil Grant, and disgrace me as your mother did.”
Her cheek crimsoned, but she answered, in a softened tone:
“There would be no disgrace in marrying Cecil. He is noble, and good, and true.”
“And poor as poverty,” he sneered.
“There are worse things than poverty!” she answered, proudly, then dropped her face in her hands and burst into tears. The strain was growing too much for her weak nerves.
But her tears only irritated the hard old man.
“You may cry, or you may laugh, but it will not alter your fate in the least,” he growled. “I have promised Harold Castello that you will marry him in a week, and you shall do it. Dare to defy me further, or to refuse obedience to my will, and I will punish you, even if you are in Cecil Grant’s very arms!”
“Would that I were!” she moaned, in terror, and, with a stifled imprecation, he left the room.
The strength of a desperate terror came to Violet when she was left alone. She walked up and down the room, wringing her little hands in despair, sobbing under her breath:
“I understand all now. I know why that fiend would force me into an abhorred marriage with himself! Oh, that fatal secret! that fatal secret! Why did it ever become mine? How shall I save myself when that doting old man, who ought to protect me, is leagued with my enemy to wreck my life? Amid all this luxury, I am friendless. Oh, Cecil, Cecil! if I could only see you for one short hour!”