“Thou hast not hidden thy nest, but, like a wandering bird, fled it.”
“She never asked my aid; she left me in London.”
The knight was charging blindly, and defeated.
“It was not for her to crave, but for thee to lavishly bestow. She left thee? What better could Abigail have done than turn her beautiful countenance and good understanding away from churlish Nabal, who lived chiefly to gloat about the cross on which he had placed her?”
“Does the sacrist advocate divorce?”
“No! No rupture of the tie sealed in heaven; but when by recriminations a home becomes a living burial, a hell, then two houses are better than one. I feel here keenly, knight. My mother had a monstrous man, my father, in wedlock. He left her to battle single-handed for her little ones. Her patient, sad face comes ever before me. Oh, how she eschewed all other men, though courted by worthier than he; how she strove to hide my father’s faults and taught us, his children, to try to respect him! I was but a youth when he died, but I tell thee I dared not look upon his coffined face lest I should curse him, then and there!”
The knight cowered as if from a malediction.
“There, there! for heaven’s sake pause, Sacrist! Abashed at home, lashed by the teacher of the faith I’ve suffered to defend, I’ll be driven to flee to the wandering Bedouin, or to death!”
“They say Lucifer, unable to commit suicide, plunges headlong into the abyss when thwarted in any design.”