ised voice, Harriet came out.

'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?'

'Yes,' she answered, wondering.

The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on her now with such
invincible hatred and defiance; and the hand that had gently touched
her arm, was clenched with such a show of evil purpose, as if it would
gladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for protection.

'That I could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come near
you, and not feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tingling
of my own!' said Alice, with a menacing gesture.

'What do you mean? What have I done?'

'Done!' returned the other. 'You have sat me by your fire; you have
given me food and money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You!
whose name I spit upon!'

The old woman, with a malevolence that made her ugliness quite awful,
shook her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of her
daughter, but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless, imploring
her to keep the money.

'If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a
gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my
lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave
me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to
you!'

As she said the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, and
spurned it with her foot.

'I tread it in the dust: I wouldn't take it if it paved my way to
Heaven! I would the bleeding foot that brought me here to-day, had
rotted off, before it led me to your house!'

Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her to
go on uninterrupted.

'It was well that I should be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone of
your name, in the first hour of my return! It was well that you should
act the kind good lady to me! I'll thank you when I die; I'll pray for
you, and all your race, you may be sure!'

With a fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred on
the ground, and with it devoted those who were standing there to
destruction, she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out into
the wild night.

The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and again in vain, and
had eyed the money lying on the threshold with an absorbing greed that
seemed to concentrate her faculties upon it, would have prowled about,
until the house was dark, and then groped in the mire on