"The way in which I have been deceived!" burst forth Zillah,
fiercely, "if papa had wished to give you half of his money, or all
of it, I should not have cared a bit. I do not care for that at all.
But why did nobody tell me the truth? Why was I told that it was out
of regard to _me_ that this horror, this frightful mockery of
marriage, was forced upon me, while my heart was breaking with
anxiety about my father; when to you I was only a necessary evil,
without which you could not hope to get my father's money; and the
only good I can possibly have is the future privilege of living in a
place whose very name I loathe, with the man who has cheated me, and
whom all my life I shall hate and abhor? Now go! and I pray God I may
never see you again."
With these words, and without waiting for a reply, she left the room,
leaving Guy in a state of mind by no means enviable.
He stood staring after her. "And that thing is mine for life!" he
thought; "that she-devil! utterly destitute of sense and of reason!
Oh, Chetwynde, Chetwynde! you have cost me dear. See you again, my
fiend of a wife! I hope not. No, never while I live. Some of these
days I'll give you back your sixty thousand with interest. And you,
why you may go to the devil forever!"
Half an hour afterward Guy was seated in the dog-cart bowling to the
station as fast as two thorough-breds could take him; every moment
congratulating himself on the increasing distance which was
separating him from his bride of an hour.
The doctor watched all that night. On the following morning the
General was senseless. On the next day he died.
CHAPTER XI.
A NEW HOME.
Dearly had Zillah paid for that frenzy of her dying father; and the
consciousness that her whole life was now made over irrevocably to
another, brought to her a pang so acute that it counterbalanced the
grief which she felt for her father's death. Fierce anger and bitter
indignation nation struggled with the sorrow of bereavement, and
sometimes, in her blind rage, she even went so far as to reproach her
father's memory. On all who had taken part in that fateful ceremony
she looked with vengeful feelings. She thought, and there was reason
in the thought, that they might have satisfied his mind without
binding her. They could have humored his delirium without forfeiting
her liberty. They could have had a mock priest, who might have read a
service which would have had no authority, and imposed vows which
would not be binding. On Guy she looked with the deepest scorn, for
she believed that he was the chief offender, and that if he had been
a man of honor he might have found many ways to avoid this thing.
Possibly Guy as he drove off was thinking the same, and cursing his
dull wit for not doing something to delay the ceremony or make it
void. But to both it was now too late.