"Ya.s.sah!"

"Stay where you are!" Cleo commanded.

"Y--ya.s.sam"--Andy stammered, halting.

"Get out!" Norton growled.

Andy jumped into the doorway at a single bound:

"Done out, sah!"

The major lifted his hand and the negro stopped:

"Tell Minerva I want to see her."

Andy hastened toward the hall, the whites of his eyes shining:

"Ya.s.sah, but she ain't in de kitchen, sah!"

"Find her and bring her here!" Norton thundered. His words rang like the sudden peal of a gun at close quarters:

Andy jumped:

"Ya.s.sah, ya.s.sah, I fetch her! I fetch her!" As he flew through the door he repeated humbly:

"I fetch her, right away, sah--right away, sah!"

Cleo watched his cowardly desertion with lips curled in scorn.

CHAPTER XXVII

A SURPRISE

For a while Norton stood with folded arms gazing at Cleo, his eyes smouldering fires of wonder and loathing. The woman was trembling beneath his fierce scrutiny, but he evidently had not noted the fact. His mind was busy with a bigger problem of character and the possible depths to which a human being might fall and still retain the human form. He was wondering how a man of his birth and breeding, the heir to centuries of culture and refinement, of high thinking and n.o.ble aspirations, could ever have sunk to the level of this yellow animal--this bundle of rags and coa.r.s.e flesh! It was incredible! His loathing for her was surpa.s.sed by one thing only--his hatred of himself.

He was free in this moment as never before. In the fearlessness of death soul and body stood erect and gazed calmly out on time and eternity.

There was one thing about the woman he couldn't understand. That she was without moral scruple--that she was absolutely unmoral in her fundamental being--he could easily believe. In fact, he could believe nothing else.

That she would not hesitate to defy every law of G.o.d or man to gain her end, he never doubted for a moment. But that a creature of her cunning and trained intelligence could deliberately destroy herself by such an act of mad revenge was unreasonable. He began dimly to suspect that her plans had gone awry. How completely she had been crushed by her own trap he could not yet guess.

She was struggling frantically now to regain her composure but his sullen silence and his piercing eyes were telling on her nerves. She was on the verge of screaming in his face when he said in low, intense tones:

"You did get even with me--didn't you?"

"Yes!"

"I didn't think _you_ quite capable of this!"

His words were easier to bear than silence. She felt an instant relief and pulled herself together with a touch of bravado:

"And now that you see I am, what are you going to do about it?"

"That's my secret," was the quiet reply. "There's just one thing that puzzles me!"

"Indeed!"

"How you could willfully and deliberately do this beastly thing?"

"For one reason only, I threw them together and brought about their love affair----"

"Revenge--yes," Norton interrupted, "but the boy--you don't hate him--you can't. You've always loved him as if he were your own----"

"Well, what of it?"

"I'm wondering----"

"What?"

His voice was low, vibrant but quiet:

"Why, if your mother instincts have always been so powerful and you've loved my boy with such devotion"--the tones quickened to sudden menace--"why you were so willing to give up your own child that day twenty years ago?"

He held her gaze until her own fell:

"I--I--don't understand you," she said falteringly.

He seized her with violence and drew her squarely before him:

"Look at me!" he cried fiercely. "Look me in the face!" He paused until she slowly lifted her eyes to his and finally glared at him with hate. "I want to see your soul now if you've got one. There's just one chance and I'm clutching at that as a drowning man a straw."

"Well?" she asked defiantly.

Norton's words were hurled at her, each one a solid shot:

"Would you have given up that child without a struggle--if she had really been your own?"

"Why--what--do you--mean?" Cleo asked, her eyes shifting.

"You know what I mean. If Helen is really your child, why did you give her up so easily that day?"

"Why?" she repeated blankly.

"Answer my question!"