He raised his hand and stopped her. A rising anger clouded his face, and, as she met his eyes, she slowly whitened.
"And you ask me—me of all men—to show mercy to Bernard Battle? Was there not a governor of Virginia before me?"
She shook her head.
"Oh, it was different then—he did not know, and we did not know, everything. For years we had not heard from him—"
"So my predecessor refused?" he asked.
She bowed her head. "But it is so different now—every one is with us."
He was looking her over grimly in an anger that seemed an emotional reversion to the past—as he felt himself reverting with all his strength to the original savage of the race. The hour for which he had starved sixteen years ago was unfolding for him at last. He gloated over it with a passion that would sicken him when it was done.
"When you came to me," he said slowly, "did you remember—"
She had risen and was standing before him, her hands hidden in the fur upon her bosom. She was pleading now with startled eyes and cold lips—she who had turned from him when the first lie was spoken—she was pleading for the man who had blackened his friend's honour that he might shield his own—she was pleading though she knew his baseness. The very nobility of her posture—the nobility that he had found outwardly in no other woman—hardened the man before her. The cold brow, the fervent mouth, the fearless eyes, the lines with which Time had chastened into womanliness her girlish figure—these had become the expression of an invincible regret. As he faced her the iron of his nature held him as in a vise, for life, which had made him a just man, had not made him a gentle one.
But her spirit had risen to match with his. "He wronged you once," she said; "let it pass—we have all been young and very ignorant; but we do not make our lives, thank God."