"Your daughter is dying; and this is her last appeal."

"I have no daughter. Twenty-three years ago my daughter buried
herself in hopeless disgrace, and for her there can be no
resurrection here. If she dreams that I am in my dotage, and may
relent, she strangely forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to
cross with that of a beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her,
the old man is not yet senile and imbecile; and that the years have
only hardened his heart. Tell her, I have almost learned to forget
even how she looked."

His eyes showed a dull reddish fire, like those of some drowsy caged
tiger, suddenly stirred into wrath, and a grayish pallor--the white
heat of the Darringtons--settled on his face.

Twice Beryl walked the length of the room, but each time the
recollection of her mother's tearful, suffering countenance, and the
extremity of her need, drove her back to the chair.

"If you knew that your daughter's life hung by a thread, would you
deliberately take a pair of shears and cut it?"

He glared at her in silence, and leaning forward on the table,
pushed roughly aside a salver, on which stood a decanter and two
wine glasses.

"I am here to tell you a solemn truth; then my responsibility ends.
Your daughter's life rests literally in your hands; for unless you
consent to furnish the money to pay for a surgical operation, which