‘I am sorry you should have been witness to so painful and disgraceful a scene, Captain Norton,’ she echoed gloomily. ‘Mine was the worst exhibition of the two: I see it now plainly. Oh, what a wretch you must think me! What an undisciplined, passionate, unwomanly creature!’ and up went her hands as shelter to her burning face.
‘Please don’t call yourself names; I can’t subscribe to them. I think you only what you are—a generous, warm-hearted girl, indignant at the sight of wrong, only inclined to be a little too hot and hasty in expressing your indignation. Never be afraid of falling in my good opinion by showing your true nature, Margaret.’
‘But my nature is so bad, Captain Norton; you cannot think how bad it is. My temper is so violent; and when it rises, I remember nothing else, except that I am angry and must show it.’
‘If you never display it in a worse cause, Margaret, than you did this afternoon, you cannot go far wrong. It was a disgraceful and disgusting act of cruelty.’
‘Oh, was it not cruel,’ she eagerly exclaimed, ‘to torture one so utterly defenceless and unarmed? I could look on at men, or dogs, or any creatures of equal power, fighting with each other, and applaud the victor; but when it comes to one against such fearful odds, one innocent creature suffering because of its innocence, I cannot bear it. Many such sights would kill me; I think that I should burst with rage.’
‘And yet in this world, Margaret, it is usually the defenceless and the innocent who suffer.’
‘We who are strong should shield them,’ she answered, hastily.
I wonder what made her link her nature with mine in that word ‘we?’ And yet I feel that I am strong—as she is. The tombstone on which we were sitting professes to cover the remains of two lovers who died within a few hours of each other. I told her the story, as it has been related to me by one of our officers, who has taken the trouble to decipher the old Dutch letters upon the stone, and asked her if she believed it possible that grief could have such an effect as to kill within so short a space of time.
‘It seems unlikely,’ she replied indifferently; ‘but natures are so various. If true, she must have loved him very devotedly.’