Meanwhile Aline was walking with Audry through the garden.
“I am glad the horrible old thing is gone,” said Audry. “Are not you?”
“It seems too dreadful to say so,” Aline answered, “but I cannot pretend that I am sorry. She always seemed to me a sort of evil influence, a spirit of discord and hate.”
“Yes,” said Audry, slipping her arm round Aline’s waist, “just as you are the spirit of love.”
“Don’t be foolish, Audry; besides I do not believe that any one could love everybody.”
“No, but need you hate them? Come now, did you hate old Moll?”
“I do not know; somehow she seemed too mean, too petty and spiteful to hate. You could not fight her exactly. She was not worth fighting, so to speak.”
“But I always felt,” said Audry, “that behind the old woman, not in the old woman herself, was a power of evil and hate, a great power that could be fought.”
“Oh, yes, quite so. I think there are things to hate. I do not believe in sickly sentiment; but that poor wretched old woman in herself was rather a thing to be pitied than hated, and, now that I come to think of it, I never did meet any one really to hate.”
“What about Thomas?”