“Bewitched, perchance, by that bad woman, which is no excuse for him.”
Betty thought a while. She could not doubt the evidence, but from her face it was clear that she took no severe view of the offence.
“Well, at the worst,” she said, “men, as I have known them, are men. He has been shut up for a long while with that minx, who is very fair and witching, and it was scarcely right to watch him through a slit in a tower. If he were my lover, I should say nothing about it.”
“I will say nothing to him about that or any other matter,” replied Margaret sternly. “I have done with Peter Brome.”
Again Betty thought, and spoke.
“I seem to see a trick. Cousin Margaret, they told you he was dead, did they not? And then that news came to us that he was not dead, only sick, and here. So the lie failed. Now they tell you, and seem to show you, that he is faithless. May not all this have been some part played for a purpose by the woman?”
“It takes two to play such parts, Betty. If you had seen——”
“If I had seen, I should have known whether it was but a part or love made in good earnest; but you are too innocent to judge. What said the marquis all this while, and the priest?”
“Little or nothing, only smiled at each other, and at length, when it grew dark and we could see no more, asked me if I did not think that it was time to go—me! whom they had kept there all that while to be the witness of my own shame.”
“Yes, they kept you there—did they not?—and brought you there just at the right time—did they not?—and shut me out of the tower so that I might not be with you—oh! and all the rest. Now, if you have any justice in you, Cousin, you will hear Peter’s side of this story before you judge him.”