The last words were uttered with a burst of spite, as if they contained the very essence of bitterness, the last drop in the vials of her wrath. The youth turned and lifted his eyes, full of sorrowful sternness, to her face. "Then you did--you did!" He paused, and his lips began to tremble under the muttered reproaches that sprang up from his heart. "Yes," cried the woman, weak in everything but her malice, "yes, then, I did order it done--these people have tormented me enough with their miserable old house, always before my eyes, and that grim ugly face staring at me as I go to church. I tell you they shall leave the neighborhood, or I will. Give me the papers." The youth lifted his eyes and regarded her sternly. "They are cancelled, madam, and torn to ribbons, that our name might not be disgraced." "Torn to pieces?" "Into a thousand pieces, madam. I would have ground them to dust, if possible." "You shall answer for this," cried the baffled woman, and with that sort of weak ferocity which is so repulsive, she sat down and began to cry. The young man drew close to her chair, for though his whole soul recoiled from sympathy with her, he forced himself to remember that she was his mother, and in tears. "Why do you dislike these old people so much?" he urged, with an attempt at soothing her. "Because _he_ liked them!" she answered, dashing his proffered hand aside; "because his low tastes followed him to the last; he was always talking of the creature that died the night you were born. He cared more for her to the last, than he ever did for me; and I hate them for it. Now, are you satisfied?" "Mother, you are talking of things that I do not understand." "Well, your father was engaged to Anna, the girl that died in the old hovel down yonder; engaged to her when he married me." "Then my father committed a great wrong!" "A great wrong! Who ever doubted it, I should like to know? Even to think of her after marrying me--to say nothing of the way he went on--sometimes talking about her in my presence, with tears in his eyes. Once, once, would you believe it! he said--to me--me, his lawful wife, that your eyes--it was when you just began to walk--that my own baby's eyes put him in mind of her." "I know very little of my father, nothing in fact, for he was a reserved man, always; but it is hard to believe that he would willfully do this foul wrong to a woman." "Willfully! I wish you could have seen him when I, with the proper spirit of a woman, felt it my duty to expostulate with him about his feelings for that creature; how he took me up as if I were to blame for being young and beautiful, and engaged in the bazar just under his hotel, as if I had some design in standing at the door about meal-times, or could help him coming in after collars and cravats afterward, and, and"--