He held his eyes down, so that the ugly gleam in them was hidden. Abbie had no thought of fearing him as yet, and she would have her say. "Do you think I don't know you're going to leave her? If it's because you don't love her, I can say no more. You are beyond any help in this world. But if you do, let me save her, even if I must oblige you in doing it! You know little of her love, though, if you think she can be happier with you rich than poor. Oh! are you so cold yourself as to believe you are acting generously to her in this? Go back to her, or she will die!" The old woman took fire as she spoke, and many of the signs of age were for the time obliterated. Some of the power and brilliancy of her youth shone again in her eyes; her form seemed to acquire a different and statelier contour. In the earnestness of her speech, involuntary gestures accompanied her words; free from all exaggeration, and so truly and gracefully fitted to her meaning as to be virtually invisible. But Bressant was not won by it: his expression grew more ugly and repellent with every successive sentence. "You fool!" said he, coming one heavy step nearer, and frowning down upon her; "I warned you away; I told you to be silent. You've meddled with what was no concern of yours; you've thrust yourself where you had no right to come--" "No right!" she interrupted, with an intensity of indignant emphasis that seemed adequate to smite to the ground the towering figure that faced her. Then, clasping her hands, and in a voice of yearning, ineffable tenderness, she added, "Oh, I have prayed for you, and wept for you, and loved you so! For your own sake, my darling, do not use such words to me!" Here she held out her arms, and tears ran hot down her faded cheeks. "Am I not your mother? Are you not my son?" "No!" answered Bressant. He threw so tremendous a weight of malignant energy into the utterance of this single word, although not raising his voice higher than his usual tone, that the moral effect upon the woman was as if he had dealt her a furious blow on the breast. Completely stunned at first, she stood as if dead, except that her body, upright and rigid, vibrated slightly from side to side, like a column about to fall. So sudden, too, had been the shock, that her arms still remained outstretched, and the track of her tears still glistened upon her cheeks, tears shed so utterly in vain as to acquire a trait of ghastly absurdity.