He raised his hand to stop her. He was sitting back in his chair with a face that had grown gray even to the skin, with eyes that looked out at nothing. There was a moment's silence save for the tall clock in the corner; then Tregenza brushed beads of water off his forehead and dried his hand on his trousers. He raised his eyes to the roof and gripped his hands together on his chest and slowly spoke a text which his wife had heard upon his lips before, but only at times of deep concern or emotion.
"'The Lard is king, be the people never so impatient; He sitteth between the cherubims, be the airth never so unquiet.'"
Few saw any particular meaning in this quotation applied in moments of stress, as Michael usually employed it; but to the man it was a supreme utterance, the last word to be spoken in the face of all the evil and wickedness of the world. Come what might, God still reigned in heaven.
He spoke aloud thus far, and afterward, by the movement of his beard and lip, Thomasin could see he was still talking or praying.
"Let the Lard lead 'e, husband, in this hard pass," she said. "'Vengeance is Mine,' the Book sez."
He turned his eyes upon her. His brows were dragged down upon them; he had brushed his gray hair like bristles upright on his head; across the mighty wall of his forehead jagged cross-lines were stamped, like the broken strata over a cliff-face.
"Ay, you say it. Vengeance be God's awn, an' mercy be God's awn. 'Tedn' for no man to meddle wi' them. Us caan't be aught but just. She'll have justice from me—no more'n that. 'Tis all wan now. Wanton or no wanton, she've flummoxed me this day. The giglot lied an' said the thing that was not. She'm not o' the Kingdom—the fust Tregenza as ever lied—the fust."
"God send it edn' as bad as it do look, master. 'Er caracter belike ban't gone. S'pose as she'm married?"
"Hould your clack, wummon. I be thinkin'."
He was thinking, indeed. In the face of this discovery, the ghost of an idea, which had haunted Gray Michael's mind more than once during the upbringing of Joan, returned a greater and more pronounced shadow than ever before. The conviction carried truth stamped upon it from the standpoint of his present horrid knowledge. To an outsider his thought had appeared absolutely devilish, to the man himself it was as a buoy thrown to one drowning. The belief flooded his mind, swept him away, convinced him. Its nature presently appeared as he answered Thomasin. She was still thinking of the thousand pounds.