Silence fell between them for several moments; something in that fixed, calm face of his child awed him, but it was temporary and, with a bitter laugh, he exclaimed—
"Oh, very well! Your poverty be upon your own head in coming years, when the grave closes over me. At my death every cent of my property passes to Hugh, and with it my name, and between you and me, as an impassable gulf, lies my everlasting displeasure. Understand that, though we live here in one house, as father and child, I do not, and will not, forgive you. You have defied me; now eat the bitter fruit of your disobedience."
"I have no desire to question the disposition of your wealth; if you prefer to give it to my cousin, I am willing, perfectly willing. I enjoy wealth as well as most people do, I suppose; but poverty does not frighten me half so much as a loveless marriage. Give Hugh your fortune, if you wish, but, father! father! let there be no estrangement between you and me. I can bear everything but your displeasure; I dread nothing so much as the loss of your love. Oh, father! forgive a disappointment which my conscience would not permit me to avert. Forgive the pain which, God knows, I would not have caused you if I could have avoided it without compromising principle. Oh, my father! my father! let not dollars and cents stand between you and your only child. I ask nothing now but your love."
She drew nearer, but he waved her off, and said with a sneering laugh—
"Away with all such cant! I gave you the choice, and you made your selection with your eyes fully open. Accept poverty as your doom, and with it my eternal displeasure. I intend to make you suffer for your obstinacy. You shall find, to your sorrow, that I am not to be trifled with, or my name is not Leonard Huntingdon. Now go your own way, and find what a thorny path you have made for yourself."
He pointed to the door as he had done years before, when the boarding-school decree went forth, and without remonstrance she left him, and sat down on the steps of the greenhouse. Soon after, the sound of his buggy wheels told her that he had gone to town, and, leaning her cheek on her hand, she recalled the painful conversation from first to last. That he meant all he had threatened, and more, she did not question for an instant, and, thinking of her future, she felt sick at heart. But with the shame and sorrow came also a thrill of joy; she had burst the fetters: she was free. Wounded affection bled freely, but brain and conscience exulted in the result.
CHAPTER XIX
The patient work of twelve months drew to a close; the study of years bore its first fruit; the last delicate yet quivering touch was given; Electra threw down palette and brush, and, stepping back, surveyed the canvas. The Exhibition would open within two days, and this was to be her contribution. A sad-eyed Cassandra, with pallid, prescient, woe-struck features—an over-mastering face, wherein the flickering light of divination struggled feebly with the human horror of the To-Come, whose hideous mysteries were known only to the royal prophetess. In mute and stern despair it looked out from the canvas, a curious anomalous thing—cut adrift from human help, bereft of aid from heaven—yet, in its doomed isolation, scorning to ask the sympathy which its extraordinary loveliness extorted from all who saw it. The artist's pride in this, her first finished creation, might well be pardoned, for she was fully conscious that the cloud-region of a painful novitiate lay far beneath her; that henceforth she would never miss the pressure of long-coveted chaplets from her brow; that she should bask in the warm, fructifying rays of public favour; and measureless exultation flashed in her beautiful eyes.