“It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying me.”
“And what form is his punishment to take?”
“For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in all men’s eyes, unless—unless God is more merciful to us than we can expect.”
Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it with sarcasm.
“It is you I pity now,” he said, looking wonderingly at her. “Do you not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to take you from me?”
“If you knew him,” Babbie answered, “you would not need to be told that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an hour ago.”
“And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off to marry him.”
“I am not so bad as that,” Babbie answered, and told him what had brought her to Thrums. “I had no thought but of returning to you, nor he of keeping me from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse door—and then we heard your voice.”
“And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove you to this?”