As Victor entered the library he was met by a very pale, wide-eyed young
woman in a picturesque black hat. Her voice was deep and full of
dramatic fervor as she said:
"You are Victor Ollnee?"
"I am."
Her eyes, large and very dark, almost black, gazed at him appealingly,
as she said: "Pardon me for a little deception. I am your relation only
in a spiritual sense--I share your sorrow, and in other ways I am
related to you. I was eager to see you, and I did not send in my name
for the reason that it would have repelled you, and you might have
refused to meet me."
Victor thought her a very singular and very theatric young person.
Certainly she was under some strong stress of emotion which caused her
lips to quiver and her voice to vibrate tensely. He knew her now. She
was the girl he had confronted in the court-room, and he stared at her,
uncertain of his footing. She seemed like some of the figures he had
seen on the stage, vivid, swift of change, unreal, but her voice was
vibrantly charming. He was sure she was the girl he had met on the
street, and she had stood beside the man Aiken during their brief
appearance in the court-room.
She approached a step or two, as if throwing herself on his mercy. "My
name is Florence Aiken. I am a newspaper writer. I am the one who
brought all this trouble to you. It was I who wrote that first article
in the _Star_ denouncing your mother."
He recoiled before her quite as dramatically as she could have wished.
"You wrote that!" he exclaimed. "I thought a man did that job."
She could not help a slight expression of pride in her work. "It was
mine, every word of it. I was terribly vindictive, I admit; but you must
know I had some provocation. Let me tell you? Will you listen to me?
Please do! I'm not so heartless as I seemed in that article, and I
cannot rest till I have made my peace with you."
Her voice, her pale face, her intense eyes, and her tense contralto
voice softened his resentment.
"I'll listen, but you can't expect me to forgive a thing like that."
"May I sit?"
"Certainly," he answered, but remained standing, as if to retain his
guard.
"Don't condemn me altogether," she pleaded. "Wait till you know how much
reason I had to hate the whole brood of clairvoyants, seers, and
psychics. My dear old grandmother was an easy mark for the cheapest of
them, and I, who paid for her nurse out of my own thin little purse, and
waited upon her night and day, had a right to consider her small fortune
my own. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay the cost of a flat, and
to see it all going to fakers and greasy palmists--well, it was too
much. It made a crusader of me--and it would have made one of you. It
was not a question of your mother--alone. I went to our managing editor
at last, and told him my story. I made it clear to him that the city was
full of these harpies who prey on poor old women like my grandmother.
'They ought to be driven out of town,' I said. 'Cut loose,' he said; and
I did. My article on your mother was honest. I believed her to be simply
another one of the same sort of impostors. I took her just like three or
four others whose methods I knew, and I got my cousin, Frank Aiken, to
bring suit against her. I thought she was a crook. I feel differently
to-day. Since talking with Judge Bartol and Mr. Stinchfield (I handled
both those assignments) I've changed my estimate of her. I have written
a page article vindicating her. I've come to tell you that her death in
that cage has changed the situation for me. I am convinced that she was
sincere, and I want to humble myself before you, her son, and ask your
forgiveness. I know you feel more like killing me, but here I am--I
couldn't rest without letting you know that I need your pardon."
Her plea, swift, voiced in music, and illustrated by her pale face,
glowing eyes, and sensitive lips, powerfully affected him. He towered
over her in savage silence for a little while, then with effort he said:
"I don't see how I can do anything to you, for I felt the same way--I
mean I didn't believe in my mother's business."