"I have heard the lie," said Miss Arnott, with quiet scorn; "but I need hardly tell you that I do not believe it."
"Thank you. My mother tells me that you saw Bithiah shortly before she left the house. I fancied she might have said something in your presence likely to throw light, perhaps, on the darkness of this mystery."
Miss Arnott flushed through her sallow skin, but kept her black eyes on the minister.
"I asked your mother to say nothing about that meeting," she remarked angrily. "Bithiah acted like the savage she was."
"I know she did. Miss Arnott, and I am deeply sorry to know it. It was, of course, because the poor girl's passions were those of a partially uncivilized being, that she so far forgot herself as to strike you."
"She did strike me," said Miss Arnott, drawing a long breath; "struck me and tore the ear-ring from my left ear. It was a ring of gold, and her hand or sleeve caught in it so roughly that the clasp gave way. My ear bled from her savage attack."
"I am deeply grieved," said Johnson, horrified at this instance of Tera's savage nature; "but, as I have said, she was but half civilized."
"She was sufficiently civilized to steal my ear-ring, however," retorted Miss Arnott. "I never got it back."
"I must see to that. What did you quarr----"
Johnson stopped suddenly, for he remembered what his mother had said was the cause of the quarrel.