Rich gazed at him in blank astonishment for the moment, and then she flung her arms about his neck, and with her eyes close to his, she cried.
“What are you thinking—that it was my father who drugged and robbed you, or my brother? Oh, Mark?”
She seemed to throw him off as she stepped back, her pale face flushing, and a look of indignant anger in her eyes.
“What does this mean?” cried Janet; but her words fell unheeded.
“Shame on you! You are silent. How could you think this thing?”
“Heaven help me!” groaned Mark. “And I fought so hard!”
By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Rich turned to him again, and with her sweet rich voice, fall of the agony of her heart, she caught his hands.
“How could you think it of him, Mark! My poor gentle-hearted father! Do you not see? Did you not tell us that you were hunted from place to place by those men?”
“Rich, my darling,” groaned Mark, as he strained her to his breast, “do you not see that you are digging a gulf between us, and that you will soon be standing on the other side, shrinking from me in abhorrence as the man who has brought this charge against your father? And God knows how I have striven to bear all in silence!”
“But, Mark—”