"I am not mistaken. This day week I met Ruth Josselin and had speech with her."
"Satisfactory, I hope?"
"It was not satisfactory; and if I must ride with you, Sir Oliver, you'll understand it to be under protest. You are a lewd man. You have taken this child—"
Here Mr. Trask choked upon speech. Recovering, he said the most unexpected thing in the world.
"I am not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in me to pity her the more for her comeliness. But as a matter of fact I do."
Sir Oliver stared at him. "You to pity her! You to plead her beauty to me, who took it out of the mud where you had flung her, mauled by you and left to lie like a bloody clout!"
But the armour of Mr. Trask's self-righteousness was not pierced. "I sentenced her," he replied calmly, "for her soul's welfare. Who said—what right have you to assume—that she would have been left to lie there? Rather, did I not promise you in the market-square that, her chastening over, my cart should fetch her? Did I not keep my word? And could you not read in the action some earnest that the girl would be looked after? Your atheism, sir, makes you dull in spiritual understanding."
"I am glad that it does, sir."
"If your passion for Ruth Josselin held an ounce of honesty, you would not be glad; for even in this world you have ruined her."
"Mr. Trask, I have not."