"Forgive me, Ethel Basset," he said, mournfully; "oh, forgive me the past!"
"I do forgive you," she replied, in a trembling voice, "and trust a time may come when you will be able to forgive yourself."
Her soft, sweet voice seemed to thrill through the marrow of his bones.
Bad and reckless, desperate and wicked though he was, the memory of pleasant and of peaceful days—days of good-will and happiness, when he had tried to forget his past wild life in South America—days spent at Laurel Lodge amid all the elegances of civilised life, came thronging now on Hawkshaw's mind. So the inscrutable soul of this miserable man seemed to die away within him, when he beheld, now in a felon's daring grasp, one who had been his hostess, his friend, and the object of his own most selfish passions!
Though she felt as if dying of shame and terror, fearfully pale, and calm, and holy Ethel looked, for she thanked God in her innocent heart that she had been taken—even from Morley—and Rose left to comfort, perhaps, their beloved father, and as she folded her white and tremulous hands upon her swelling bosom, she felt that the dread hour had come when she must surely die.
Oh, who could once have foretold the awful scene of outrage through which, perhaps, her blameless life was to pass away.
And now, as Pedro's iron grasp about her tightened, and the laughter rung around her, like a chorus of devils, she lifted her imploring eyes to Hawkshaw, and their gaze seemed to turn him into stone.
Sorrow, horror, and upbraiding—all were there expressed.
It was she, the same Ethel, that he—blood-guilty though he was, and selfish too—had ventured to love in peaceful England. She, who had never coquettishly allured nor proudly repulsed him; but had been gentle and polite, according to the rules of well-bred society—gentle, even, and pitiful—until she knew his crimes and his character, and learned to abhor them.
All this rushed like a flood upon his memory, and Cramply Hawkshaw, with all his errors, faults, and crimes, felt, for the moment, the soul of a hero within him, and he resolved to save Ethel Basset from disgrace, or die in the effort—yea, to save her even for Morley Ashton.