"Then you find that age has not drawn the fangs from the old crippled Darrington lion, nor clipped his claws?" The sneer curved his white mustache, until she saw the outline of the narrow, bloodless underlip. "That king of beasts scorns to redden his fangs, or flesh his claws, in the quivering body of his own offspring. Your metaphor is an insult to natural instincts." She laid the letter once more before him, and looked down on him, with ill-concealed aversion. "Who are you? By what right dare you intrude upon me?" "I am merely a sorrowful, anxious, poverty-stricken woman, whose heart aches over her mother's sufferings and vho would never have endured the humiliation of this interview, except to deliver a letter in the hope of prolonging my mother's life." "You do not mean that you are--my--" "I am nothing to you, sir, but the bearer of a letter from your dying daughter." "You cannot be the child of--of Ellice?" After the long limbo of twenty-three years, the name burst from him, and with what a host of memories its echo peopled the room, where that erring daughter had formerly reigned queen of his heart. "Yes, Ellice is my dear mother's name." He stared at the majestic form, and at the faultless face looking so proudly down upon him, as from an inaccessible height; and she heard him draw his breath, with a labored hissing sound. "But--I thought her child was a boy?" "I am the youngest of two children." "It is impossible that you are the daughter of that infernal, low-born, fiddling foreign vagabond who--" "Hush! The dead are sacred!" She threw up her hand, with an imperious gesture, not of deprecation, but of interdict; and all the stony calm in her pale face seemed shivered by a passionate gust, that made her eyes gleam like steel under an electric flash. "I am the daughter of Ignace Brentano, and I love, and honor his memory, and his name. No drop of your Darrington blood runs in my veins; I love my dear mother--but I am my father's daughter--and I want no nobler heritage than his name. Upon you I have no shadow of claim, but I am here from dire necessity, at your mercy--a helpless, defenseless pleader in my mother's behalf--and as such, I appeal to the boasted southern chivalry, upon which you pride yourself, for immunity from insult while I am under your roof. Since I stood no taller than your knee, my mother has striven to inculcate a belief in the nobility, refinement, and chivalric deference to womanhood, inherent in southern gentlemen; and if it be not all a myth, I invoke its protection against abuse of my father. A stranger, but a lady, every inch, I demand the respect due from a gentleman." For a moment they eyed each other, as gladiators awaiting the signal, then General Darrington sprang to his feet, and with a bow, stately and profound as if made to a duchess, replied: "And in the name of southern chivalry, I swear you shall receive it."