Oh, I know your whole
damn' sex, begad!--no offence to these other ladies."
"William, this is scandalous!" cried Mrs. Faringfield. My mother, too,
looked what it was not her place to speak. As for Tom and me, we had
to defer to Mr. Faringfield; and so had Cornelius, who was very
solemn, with an uneasy frown between his white eyebrows. Poor Fanny,
most sensitive to disagreeable scenes, sat in self-effacement and mute
distress.
Mr. Faringfield, not replying to his wife, took a turn up and down the
room, apparently in great mental perplexity and dismay.
Suddenly he was a transformed man. Pale with wrath, his lips moving
spasmodically, his arms trembling, he turned upon Margaret, grasped
her by the shoulders, and in a choked, half-articulate voice demanded:
"Tell the truth! Is it so--this shame--crime? Speak! I will shake the
truth from you!"
"Father! Don't!" she screamed, terrified by his look; and from his
searching gaze, she essayed to hide, by covering her face with her
hands, the secret her conscience magnified so as to forbid confession
and denial alike. I am glad to recall this act of womanhood, which
showed her inability to brazen all accusation out.
But Mr. Faringfield saw no palliating circumstance in this evidence of
womanly feeling. Seeing in it only an admission of guilt, he raised
his arms convulsively for a moment as if he would strike her down with
his hands, or crush her throat with them.
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