“When I told him that I was resolved not to assert my rights, he seemed utterly confounded. He could not understand how the down-trodden slave dared to revolt against him. And when he found that my decision was irrevocable, I thought he would have an attack of apoplexy. It made him wild with rage to think that he was only separated from this immense fortune--the dream of his life--by a single word of mine, and to find that he had not the power to extort that word from me. Then began a struggle between us, which became more and more frightful as the money he possessed gradually dwindled away. But it was in vain that he resorted to brutal treatment; in vain that he struck me, tortured me, and dragged me about the floor by the hair of my head! The thought that I was avenged, that his sufferings equalled mine, increased my courage a hundredfold, and made me almost insensible to physical pain. He would certainly have been the first to grow weary of the struggle, if a fiendish plan had not occurred to him. He said to himself that if he could not conquer the wife, he COULD conquer the mother and he threatened to turn his brutality to you, Wilkie. To save you--for I knew what he was capable of--I pretended to waver, and I asked twenty-four hours for reflection. He granted them. But the next day I left him forever, flying from him with you in my arms.” M. Wilkie turned white, and a cold chill crept up his spine. However, it was not pity for his mother’s sufferings, nor shame for his father’s infamy that agitated him, but ever the same terrible fear of incurring the enmity of this dangerous coveter of the Chalusse millions. Would he be able to hold his father at bay even with the assistance of M. de Coralth and the Marquis de Valorsay? A thousand questions rose to his lips, for he was eager to hear the particulars of his mother’s flight; but Madame d’Argeles hurried on with her story as if she feared her strength would fail before she reached the end.