In the turbulent confusion of his mind, the Squire still clung to certain fixities. He had acted for the best; he had acted so that the innocent should not suffer; and if he himself had been amongst the innocent who were to escape suffering, his own safety had not been his chief thought. And if his actions, or his refraining from action, had added to the burden justly borne by the guilty, that had been inevitable if the innocent were to be saved; in any case it had added so little that he could not be blamed for ignoring it. Cowardice at least, he had thought, was no crime that could ever be laid to his charge, and he had not shown it when he had braved all consequences in refusing to lift a finger to avert the disaster that was now, in spite of all, threatening him.
But she was dragging from him all his armour, piece by piece. He let it go, and clung to his naked manhood.
"You may say what you like," he said, squaring himself and looking out over the water in front of him. "I simply stood aside. What could you—no, not you, what could anyone—have expected me to do? Publish the truth—overwhelm the innocent with the guilty; and all for what? For nothing. You were free. You——"
"Free! Yes. They had let me out of prison, that's quite true. Would you consider yourself free with that taint hanging over you? Was I free to come back to my friends? Was I free even to settle down anywhere where my story was known? Susan, the thief, was to be sheltered, because she bore the honoured name of Clinton. She was to go free. Yes. But I, who had taken her punishment, was to be left to bear the bitter results of it all my life. What meanness! What base cowardice!"
He hardened himself, but said nothing.
"Susan had stolen this necklace, worth thousands of pounds," she went on. "She had——"
"But not the jewel that you were imprisoned for stealing," he put in again.
"I have already told you that she did; and I can prove it by that woman's evidence."
He wavered, but stuck to his point. "I don't believe it," he said, "and you can leave it out."
"I will, because it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not. You will believe it when you see her in the witness-box."