Are you ready to
see her grow up away from you, losing even the little recollection
she has had of your kindness--passing you in the street without
knowing you, perhaps even having you pointed out to her as a person
she should avoid? Are you prepared to shut your eyes and ears
henceforth to all that you may hear of her new life, when she is
happy, rich, respectable, a courted heiress--perhaps the wife of
some great man? Are you ready to accept that she will never know--
that no one will ever know--that you had any share in making her
so, and that if you should ever breathe it abroad we shall hold it
our duty to deny it, and brand the man who takes it up for you as a
liar and the slanderer of an honest girl?"
"That's what I came here for," she said curtly, then, regarding
them curiously, and running her ringed hand up and down the railed
back of her chair, she added, with a half laugh, "What are you
playin' me for, boys?"
"But," said Colonel Pendleton, without heeding her, "are you ready
to know that in sickness or affliction you will be powerless to
help her; that a stranger will take your place at her bedside, that
as she has lived without knowing you she will die without that
knowledge, or that if through any weakness of yours it came to her
then, it would embitter her last thoughts of earth and, dying, she
would curse you?"
The smile upon her half-open mouth still fluttered around it, and
her curved fingers still ran up and down the rails of the chair-
back as if they were the cords of some mute instrument, to which
she was trying to give voice.
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