Mistress Mowbray watched exultantly. She was not sure that these calm measured phrases were not more crushing than her own invective. “Now, child, you see how little you understand things,” she observed patronisingly.
Master Latour, however, was not acting as a partisan; he was merely putting the case, partly to show all sides and partly because it interested him to test Aline’s powers.
“Master Latour is a just man,” said Aline with some hesitation, “and I think he will understand when I say that I really know that these people are not all bad,—that the disease, as you call it, has not spread so far but that it may be checked.” She paused for a moment from nervousness, and looked a little confused.
“Take your time;—festina lente,[22]—develop your argument at your convenience,” said Latour not unkindly.
[22] Make haste slowly.
“With regard then to the question of example,” Aline went on, recovering herself and catching something of Latour’s manner of speaking, “with regard to the question of example, you all know that this ‘change of abode’ will only stir up bitterness and that that will spread tenfold and may wreck us altogether. A punishment that the others feel to be just is a lesson; a punishment that is felt to be unjust is a flame for kindling a revolutionary fire.
“You say I am a child and I do not know; but, please, I do know more about these people than any of you. I have spoken to every one of them. I know them all; and about some of them I know a great deal. I do not suppose there is any one here, except myself, who even knows their names, beyond those of his own tenants. Marry, now, is that not so?”
Aline having flung down her challenge looked around with flashing eyes.
Latour had been watching her with his cold aesthetic appreciation, admiring her instinctively beautiful gestures, but this time, he too felt a real touch of the child’s magic as she glanced scornfully round.
“I do not pretend to be old enough to know what is the right thing to do,” Aline went on, “but surely, surely,” she said in earnest pleading tones, “people who want to be just should carefully find out everything first. Is that not so?” she asked, turning round quickly to Mistress Mowbray;—“Do you not think so yourself?”