“And Clement Sutherland?”
“May go to the State’s prison for ten years.”
She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands, and shuddered through all her frame, and remained silent for another while. And then she rose up and threw herself in his arms, and clasped him around the neck, saying—
“We must lose it, dear Mark; we must lose it! Oh! I am so sorry for you!”
“My poor Rose, I knew what your decision would be; I told the wretched man so. But, my dearest, it is proper that I should set the matter before you in its true light. Should you fail to expose the forged mortgage, you will not only lose the sum of forty thousand dollars, which was raised on your plantation, but, by the foreclosure of the mortgage, and the peremptory sale of the plantation, the property will be sacrificed at about a fourth of its real value, and you will lose all, my poor Rosalie.”
“I do suppose so. Well, well; let all go—all, but peace of mind; for, my dearest Mark, could you or I enjoy peace of mind—could we take pleasure in our morning ramble, or our evening fireside—could we take comfort in anything, dearest Mark, if a deliberate deed of ours had consigned a fellow-creature—an old, gray-headed man—to a prison? Oh, never let it be dreamed of, Mark.”
“That is a woman’s thought! Men would deem it a stern duty to prosecute the criminal.”
“And do you?”
“I should so deem it, but for the thought that this is the old man’s first offence, under great temptation; that it surely will be his last; that punishment, in his case, would not be reformatory, but ruinous; that no one can be tempted by the impunity of his crime, since no one but ourselves know it.”
This was all that was said then. Mr. Bolling’s entrance interrupted the conversation; and Billy soon appeared and summoned the party to tea. And though Rosalie presided at her supper-table that evening with a graver face than usual, yet by the next morning she had recovered her self-possession and cheerfulness, and met them all at breakfast with a smile.