Mary Connynge rose and followed him into the open air, her eyes still fixed upon the dark-crusted stain which had spread upon his tunic. They walked in silence to a point beyond the cabin.
"You would call her Catharine!" burst out Mary Connynge. "Oh! I heard you in your very sleep. You believe every lying word Sir Arthur tells you. You believe—"
John Law looked at her with the simple and direct gaze which the tamer of the wild beast employs when he goes among them, the look of a man not afraid of any living thing.
"Madam," said he, at length, calmly and evenly, as before, "what I have said, sleeping or waking, will not matter. You have tried to kill me. You did not succeed. You will never try again. Now, Madam, I give you the privilege of kneeling here on the ground before me, and asking of me, not my pardon, but the pardon of the woman you have foully stabbed, even as you have me."
The figure before him straightened up, the blazing yellow eyes sought his once, twice, thrice, behind them all the fury of a savage soul. It was of no avail. The cool blue eyes looked straight into her heart. The tall figure stood before her, unyielding. She sought to raise her eyes once more, failed, and so would have sunk down as he had said, actually on her knees before him.
John Law extended a hand and stopped her. "There," said he. "It will suffice. I can not demean you. There is the child."
"You called her Catharine!" broke out the woman once more in her ungovernable rage. "You would name my child—"
"Madam, get up!" said John Law, sharply and sternly. "Get up on your feet and look me in the face. The child shall be called for her who should have been its mother. Let those forgive who can. That you have ruined my life for me is but perhaps a fair exchange; yet you shall say no word against that woman whose life we have both of us despoiled."