“Philip,” she said, “this is Kinraid come back again to wed me. He is alive; he has niver been dead, only taken by t’ press-gang. And he says yo’ saw it, and knew it all t’ time. Speak, was it so?”
Philip knew not what to say, whither to turn, under what refuge of words or acts to shelter.
Sylvia’s influence was keeping Kinraid silent, but he was rapidly passing beyond it.
“Speak!” he cried, loosening himself from Sylvia’s light grasp, and coming towards Philip, with a threatening gesture. “Did I not bid you tell her how it was? did I not bid you say how I would be faithful to her, and she was to be faithful to me? Oh! you damned scoundrel! have you kept it from her all that time, and let her think me dead, or false? Take that!”
His closed fist was up to strike the man, who hung his head with bitterest shame and miserable self-reproach; but Sylvia came swift between the blow and its victim.
“Charley, thou shan’t strike him,” she said. “He is a damned scoundrel” (this was said in the hardest, quietest tone), “but he is my husband.”
“Oh! thou false heart!” exclaimed Kinraid, turning sharp on her. “If ever I trusted woman, I trusted you, Sylvia Robson.”
He made as though throwing her from him, with a gesture of contempt that stung her to life.
“Oh, Charley!” she cried, springing to him, “dunnot cut me to the quick; have pity on me, though he had none. I did so love thee; it was my very heart-strings as gave way when they told me thou was drowned—father, and the Corneys, and all, iverybody. Thy hat and the bit of ribbon I gave thee were found drenched and dripping wi’ sea-water; and I went mourning for thee all the day long—dunnot turn away from me; only hearken this once, and then kill me dead, and I’ll bless you—and have niver been mysel’ since; niver ceased to feel the sun grow dark and the air chill and dreary when I thought on the time when thou was alive. I did, my Charley, my own love! And I thought that thou was dead for iver, and I wished I were lying beside thee. Oh, Charley! Philip, there where he stands, could tell you this was true. Philip, wasn’t it so?”