"Yes."
I can not very well describe the scorn of voice and manner with which she addressed me.
"That is enough for me," she said. "You are a traitor, a deserter, proven out of your own mouth."
"But——"
"No, sir; there is naught you can say would interest me. I should despise you none the less had you deserted in the same circumstances to my own side. It makes it no less culpable that you deserted from my side because our fortunes were at low ebb. And indeed I think it will be a sure sign there is a God in heaven that such a black traitor as you will be, should be scorned even by the wicked men of the usurper in London."
"But you shall hear me," I protested. "This is absurd, what you say. You have taken two bare statements of fact and twisted into them the implications skilfully made by a personal enemy. You——"
"Last night, sir," she said cuttingly, withdrawing the folds of her cloak so that they might not touch me, "you played upon my sympathies with your tale of exile and a brother buried in the Clan Donald country, and I was all for sympathy with you and sorrow for your sorrow. You as much as told me you were one of the Good People. You let me deceive myself, after you had deceived me first. Oh, you will have acted unspeakably!"
"What I told you was true!"
"It could never have been."
"I swear it was. I was out in the '19; I fled to Scotland with my brother; he died and was buried there; I escaped with the remnants of the expedition; I am an exile at this moment."