“Can you not be just?” he said.
“Just?” she cried, “to you? I thought to teach my children to bless and reverence your name as that of the man who had saved their father. I taught them to pray for you with their innocent little lips, and I sent to you and humbled myself to ask you to defend my husband in his sore need, but you refused—refused forsooth, because you were gloating over the opportunity you would have for revenge. The trial came, he was condemned through your words, but I still believed you honest, and trusted in you for help. I sent to you once again to pray you to try and restore my husband to me, but you coldly refuse, while your lips are yet hot with promises and lies.”
“Sage,” he cried, passionately, “you tear my heart.”
“I would tear it,” she cried, fiercely, in her excitement, “coward that you are—cruel coward, full of deceit and revenge. Go: leave me, let me never see you again, for I could not look upon you without loathing, and I shudder now to think that I have ever touched your hands.”
“Sage, my girl, Sage!” said the Churchwarden, as he rose and took her hands, “this is madness, and to-morrow you will be sorry for what you have said.”
“Uncle,” she cried wildly, as she clung to him, “I cannot bear his presence here. Send him from me, or I shall die.”
She hid her face upon her uncle’s shoulder, and he held out his right hand, and grasped that of Luke.
“God bless you, my boy!” he said, with trembling voice. “She is beside herself with grief, and knows not what she says.”
Luke returned the warm pressure of the old farmer’s hand, and would have gone, but Portlock held it still.
“I thank you for coming, Luke Ross,” he said; “and I know you to be just and true. Would to heaven I had never made that great mistake!”