"I will not go," she said, speaking quickly to herself in an odd, uneven tone. "The law of England shall not make me. I am an old woman. If they do, they cannot open my lips. I! to stand up in one of their courts, and tell the story of my shame, that they may listen and condemn my son. Oh, Bernard, Bernard, Bernard! The Lord have mercy upon you for this your crime! Mine was the sin. Mine should be the guilt. Oh, my God, my God! Is this just, in my old age, to pour down this fire of punishment upon my bowed head? Have I not suffered and done penance—ay, until I had even thought that I had won for myself peace and rest and forgiveness? Was it a sin to think so? Is this my punishment? Oh, Bernard, my son, my son! Let not the sin be his, O Lord. It is mine—mine only!"
Sweet perfumes were floating upon the soft still air, and away on the hill sides the morning mists were rolling away. The sun's warmth fell upon the earth and the flowers, and birds and humming insects were glad. And in the midst of it all she stood there, a silent, stony figure, grief and anguish and despair written in her worn face. God was dealing very hardly with her, she cried in her agony. Truly sin was everlasting.
"Signorina!"
She turned round with a start. A servant girl stood by her side with a card on a salver.
"A gentleman to see the signorina," she announced; "an English gentleman."
The woman turned pale with fear, and her fingers trembled. She would not even glance at the name on the card.
"Tell him that I see no one. I am ill. I will not see him, be his business what it may. Do you hear, child? Go and send him away."
The girl curtsied and disappeared. Her mistress stepped back into the room, and listened fearfully. Soon there came what she had dreaded, the sound of an altercation. She could hear Nicolette protesting in her shrill patois, and a rather vulgar, but very determined English voice, vigorously asserting itself. Then there came the sound of something almost like a scuffle, and Nicolette came running in with red eyes.
"Signorina, the brute, the brute!" she cried; "he will come in. He dared to lay his hands upon me. See, he is here! Oh, that Marco had been in the house! He should have beaten him, the dog, the coward, to oppose a woman's will by force!"
While she had been sobbing out her complaint, her assailant had followed up his advantage, and Mr. Benjamin Levy, in a rather loud check suit, and with a cringing air, but with a certain dogged determination in his manner, appeared. Mrs. Martival turned to him with quiet dignity, but with flashing eyes.