The Legacy of Cain

"That your unnatural sister will tell you herself," Helena's voice added. She had opened the door while we were too much absorbed in our talk to hear her.

Selina attempted to leave the room. I caught her by the hand, and held her back. I was afraid of what I might do if she left me by myself. Never have I felt anything like the rage that tortured me, when I saw Helena looking at us with the same wicked smile on her lips that had insulted me when we met on the stairs. "Have we anything to be ashamed of?" I said to Selina. "Stay where you are."

"You may be of some use, Miss Jillgall, if you stay," my sister suggested. "Eunice seems to be trembling. Is she angry, or is she ill?"

The sting of this was in the tone of her voice. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life—but I did succeed in controlling myself.

"Go on with what you have to say," I answered, "and don't notice me."

"You are not very polite, my dear, but I can make allowances. Oh, come! come! putting up your hands to stop your ears is too childish. You would do better to express regret for having misled your father. Yes! you did mislead him. Only a few days since, you left him to suppose that you were engaged to Philip. It became my duty, after that, to open his eyes to the truth; and if I unhappily provoked him, it was your fault. I was strictly careful in the language I used. I said: 'Dear father, you have been misinformed on a very serious subject. The only marriage engagement for which your kind sanction is requested, is my engagement. I have consented to become Mrs. Philip Dunboyne.'"

"Stop!" I said.

"Why am I to stop?"

"Because I have something to say. You and I are looking at each other. Does my face tell you what is passing in my mind?"

"Your face seems to be paler than usual," she answered—"that's all."

"No," I said; "that is not all. The devil that possessed me, when I discovered you with Philip, is not cast out of me yet. Silence the sneering devil that is in You, or we may both live to regret it."

Whether I did or did not frighten her, I cannot say. This only I know—she turned away silently to the door, and went out.

I dropped on the sofa. That horrid hungering for revenge, which I felt for the first time when I knew how Helena had wronged me, began to degrade and tempt me again. In the effort to get away from this new evil self of mine, I tried to find sympathy in Selina, and called to her to come and sit by me. She seemed to be startled when I looked at her, but she recovered herself, and came to me, and took my hand.

"I wish I could comfort you!" she said, in her kind simple way.

"Keep my hand in your hand," I told her; "I am drowning in dark water—and I have nothing to hold by but you."

"Oh, my darling, don't talk in that way!"

"Good Selina! dear Selina! You shall talk to me. Say something harmless—tell me a melancholy story—try to make me cry."

My poor little friend looked sadly bewildered.

"I'm more likely to cry myself," she said. "This is so heart-breaking—I almost wish I was back in the time, before you came home, the time when your detestable sister first showed how she hated me. I was happy, meanly happy, in the spiteful enjoyment of provoking her. Oh, Euneece, I shall never recover my spirits again! All the pity in the world would not be pity enough for you. So hardly treated! so young! so forlorn! Your good father too ill to help you; your poor mother—"

I interrupted her; she had interested me in something better than my own wretched self. I asked directly if she had known my mother.

"My dear child, I never even saw her!"

"Has my father never spoken to you about her?"

"Only once, when I asked him how long she had been dead. He told me you lost her while you were an infant, and he told me no more. I was looking at her portrait in the study, only yesterday. I think it must be a bad portrait; your mother's face disappoints me."

I had arrived at the same conclusion years since. But I shrank from confessing it.

"At any rate," Selina continued, "you are not like her. Nobody would ever guess that you were the child of that lady, with the long slanting forehead and the restless look in her eyes."

What Selina had said of me and my mother's portrait, other friends had said. There was nothing that I know of to interest me in hearing it repeated—and yet it set me pondering on the want of resemblance between my mother's face and mine, and wondering (not for the first time) what sort of woman my mother was. When my father speaks of her, no words of praise that he can utter seem to be good enough for her. Oh, me, I wish I was a little more like my mother!