"But think of _him_--you would not see the boy ruined? With Hilda for wife and my fortune his ruin will be very complete. As his wife you could save him--you know you could! And you have three times the brains of that minx. Surely you could manage----" "Enough, Mr. Barton. I will not hear what you are going to say. I could save him. Yes, I know I could," cried Miriam, and the tears rose in her eyes. "But, much as I love him, and God alone knows how much that is--I cannot lower myself in his eyes and in my own. I cannot do more, Mr. Barton. The salvation of Gerald is in your hands, not in mine. If you hated his mother, who wronged you, that is no reason you should ruin him, a young man, who has done you no harm. It is a villainous, mad, horrible thing to do!" "You think so? Well, it must suffice for you that I know what I am doing. If Gerald, after all my kindness and care, had shown any love for me--if he had been even ordinarily grateful, I might have spared him. But he is a brainless, selfish, cold-hearted fop, who abuses me even while he eats my meat. He is useless to man, ruinous to woman, so the sooner he drinks and debauches himself into an early grave, the better it will be for humanity in general. I brought you down here thinking to give him a chance, but he has thrown that away. I have no pity for him!" "Let your will in favour of Major Dundas stand," urged Miriam, "and Gerald will not lose his chance. Hilda is a mere fortune-hunter. She will throw him over as soon as ever she hears that he is poor." "I shall do nothing of the sort," replied Barton coldly. "He shall have my money, and, since he is so blind, he can marry Hilda. You--since you refuse to save him--can stand aside and watch his downfall." "I tell you it is beyond my power to marry him, even if I wished to. I cannot achieve the impossible. Gerald's future cannot depend upon me." "Then, if it is to depend upon me, a cruel future it will be for him. By a new will I am leaving everything to him." "Mr. Barton, you are an incarnate devil!" "Nothing of the kind--only very much a man." "A coward, since you revenge yourself on a dead woman." At this Barton was seized with a sudden fury. "I revenge myself on the son of a woman who ruined me," he almost shouted. "I would have lived and died a decent man but for her. Within me I had the seeds of a wicked heredity, which drove me, if not to crime, at least into contact with crime. The woman I loved would have saved me from myself, and my sister stepped in to prevent my salvation. I hated her for it, I hate her son, and the knowledge that he will go headlong to ruin after my death, will be the sweetest of my dying thoughts." Miriam looked at the old man with amazement, as he shook with fury and impotent rage. His face became positively brutish, his eyes glittered with insane light, and he shook from head to foot, as though seized with a palsy.