"You never shall!" she cried, leaping from her bed and striking flint on steel. "I have not thwarted your life until this night. I have yielded to every wish, trusted your wisdom in all things, never rebelled even in unspoken thoughts—questioned nothing. But upon this I'll speak, and struggle, and weary the air, and weep till I madden you into sense. I've done your will for near five-and-twenty years; and please God will do it for five-and-twenty more; but to-night, I'm a maiden again—a maid of the Carews; and you shall obey me, as you obeyed when you came a-courting."
"Hide that light and come to bed. You will be cold. I have spoken. At least let there be peace between us."
"There shall be no peace. You forget that you have a wife and a daughter."
"'Tis the part of sin to make us egoists—as all suffering does. And 'tis the part of sin not to stop at the sinner. God grants that interest on wickedness to the devil: that the ill deed done should strike more than he who does it."
But his wife poured out a flood of alternate entreaties and commands; and he marvelled even in that hour that the helpmate of many years had hidden so much from him.
"There is a greatness of purpose in you that I had not guessed," he said. "Maybe no man knows all of his wife until he comes before her a master sinner as I do now. She smiles on his fair hour, content to see him happy; but with storm—— It is my glory in this agony to know—— And yet no woman was ever born to lead me. To bury the dead without confession would be to act a lie. She shall have her rights and her revenge."
"We are not bound to trumpet our sins. And the rights of the dead are in the hand of the Lord. If it is His will that you suffer more than you have suffered, it will happen so. By making this unhappy thing known, you throw all into disorder, and strew many paths with difficult problems."
"What then? Difficulty is the road that every man walks."
Until dawn of day they spoke together; and then Maurice Malherb fell asleep and his wife, fancying that she had conquered, crept out of bed and knelt and thanked God for victory.
Yet her husband's waking words shattered Annabel's hope.