“Now, sir, have you any more to say?” and my mother sank back in her seat with a low moan.
Chapter Thirty.
“Now, sir, have you any more to say?”
A simple enough question, but when spoken to me sternly before those present, in my uncle’s fierce, military voice, and accompanied by looks that seemed crushing in their contempt, they were very hard to bear in that strange silence which followed.
There they all stood and sat about me, while I felt like a prisoner at the bar before my judge. It was terrible, and I wavered.
Should I speak, and accuse poor, weak, amiable Tom Mercer, and send him away in disgrace, or should I suffer now, and wait till the truth came out by and by?
I was deciding on the latter, when I heard a sob which seemed to echo in my throat, and I looked up quickly from where my eyes had rested on a particular spot in the pattern of the library carpet, to see my mother’s convulsed face and yearning eyes fixed upon me, as Mrs Doctor stood by her side, holding her hand quite affectionately.
That look decided me.