"Yes, you’ve a scoundrel for a father! You must never forget that!" she cried. "Never, never, for one moment! Wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, you must never forget that. You’ll have to take a back seat in life, I can tell you. Not yours will be the lot of other girls. With a father who is a felon in the eyes of the law you can never marry into a respectable family without bringing into it such a load of disgrace as will do it a cruel wrong." She fixed her eyes sharply on the girl’s pale miserable face as she spoke, with more than a suspicion of a love affair between her and Bernard, which she determined to quash, cost what it might to Doris. "If you marry," she continued harshly, "you will take your husband a dowry of disgrace--that, and nothing else!" She laughed harshly. "Why," she ejaculated the next minute, "why, the girl’s not listening!" for she perceived Doris springing from her bed and beginning, in trembling haste, to dress herself. To get away from that terrible voice, and the sound of those cruel words, was Doris’s first determination; her second was to go where she could hide for ever and ever from Bernard Cameron, lest in his noble, disinterested love for her he should venture, in spite of what had occurred, to insist upon marrying her. The idea of bringing him a dowry of disgrace was so frightful that it over-balanced for the moment the poor, distraught mind of the suffering girl. Mrs. Cameron was one of those women who, when wronged, are blind and deaf to all else; suffering acutely, they pour out torrents of words, unseeing, unheeding the mischief they may be doing to others. She, therefore, continued talking, in a loud, harsh voice, with unsparing bitterness, all the time Doris was dressing and putting on her plainest outdoor apparel; and the mother’s mind having turned to the subject of marriage, and her wish being to destroy any thoughts Doris might have cherished of Bernard as a possible husband, she said: "My son, though poor as a pauper now--thanks to your father--bears an unblemished name. Honourable as the day, he comes of a most honourable race of men. In time, when he has worked up some sort of position for himself, he may marry a girl with money, and thus, in a way, attain to something like the position he has lost. It is all a chance, of course, but it is the only chance he has. There are lots of girls with money. He is handsome and taking; he must marry one of them. Do you hear me, Doris? I say he must! It is the only chance he has. Are you not glad for him to have just that one little chance?" Doris was silent. "Ha! You do not answer? Can it be, can it possibly be," Mrs. Cameron’s voice grew hysterical, in her fear and anxiety, "that from any foolish words the poor, ruined lad has said--such words as lads will say to giddy girls--you can possibly consider him at all, in any way, bound to you?"