“What would your young man say?”
Minnie laughed.
“Since you ax, I think I may answer that he’d say I was in the right. Now you know enough—tu much. Leave me—I won’t have you go another yard with me.”
“I do know tu much for my peace,” he said; “but ’tis you who don’t know enough. I’ve waited a longful time to speak, but now I’ll do it, though I break your heart. Better that than ruination. This man—Nicholas Merle—he’m married, an’ that packet he got—’twas from his ill-served wife.”
“You coward; you liar; you wicked, venomous snake!” cried out Minnie. “To stand theer afore your Maker an’ hatch that lie for the ear of a loving woman! Oh! I wish I was a man; I’d tear—but he shall—he shall—he shall know it this night!”
Her passion revealed her secret. She saw what she had done, grew a little calmer and explained.
“This is the last time I’ll ever foul my breath with your name, Elias Bassett; but since you’ve surprised this out of me, I must say more. If you’ve a shadow of honour, you’ll keep a secret I swore not to reveal to a soul, yet have now revealed in anger to you. The fault was yours. When my true love went away, he told me that I might find to-day a letter in a secret spot known to both of us far away upon the Moreton road. I went there—rode my pony out this morning—and a letter waited me. I tell you these things that you shall breed no more lies against him or me. In that note he told me that he should be at Wistman’s Wood to-night at a familiar spot I wot very well. And he is to let me into gert news. Wonnerful things have happened to him. But he is supposed to be far away, and that he is tarrying here is my secret. And now you have surprised it out of me. At least I can trust you not to breathe of this to any living soul if ever you loved me.”
“I shall keep silent, be sure, since you find it in your heart to give me the lie and call me ‘snake.’”
“I saw the letter that you pretend to have seen. He showed it to me. Not that I asked to see it. I would trust Nicholas before the sun. You are dreaming, or else very wicked. The packet was from a scrivener. It concerned money. ‘A wife’! This is jealous madness. He never looked at any woman before he met me.”
“If I be wrong, I’ll beg his pardon on my knees.”