"Oh, dear, what a miserable thing! But I couldn't know that."
After a while, she drew a chair, and sat down by Nancy, and said:
"I won't punish him, Nancy."
Nancy burst out sobbing afresh.
"You have punished him," said she, bruskly, "and me, too, as never did you no harm. You have driven him out of the country, you have."
At this piece of feminine justice Helen's anger revived. "So, then," said she, "ships are to be destroyed, and ladies and gentlemen murdered, and nobody is to complain, or say an angry word, if the wretch happens to be paying his addresses to you. That makes up for all the crimes in the world. What! Can an honest woman like you lose all sense of right and wrong for a man? And such a man!"
"Why, he is as well-made a fellow as ever I saw," sobbed Nancy.
"Oh, is he?" said Helen, ironically—her views of manly beauty were different, and black eyes a sine qua non with her—"then it is a pity his soul is not made to correspond. I hope by my next visit you will have learned to despise him as you ought. Why, if I loved a man ever so, I'd tear him out of my heart if he committed a crime; ay, though I tore my soul out of my body to do it."
"No, you wouldn't," said Nancy, recovering some of her natural pugnacity; "for we are all tarred with the same stick, gentle or simple."
"But I assure you I would," cried Helen; "and so ought you."