"Well, then, I want to know if you're a-going to stop spying on me now that father has got well off? There ain't no cause nor reason for you to hang about me any longer. You know what my life has been, and you know that through it all I've kept myself like a lady. It ain't nice, knowing as people do that you came courting once, 'tain't nice to have you hanging round in this way."
He knew quite well that the reason she gave for objecting to his spying was not the true one. He had enough insight into her character, enough knowledge of her manner and the modulations in her voice, to have a pretty true instinct as to when she was lying and when she was not; but he did not know that the allusion to the time when he used to court her was thrown out to produce just what it did in him, a tender recollection of his old hopes.
"Until Markham is arrested, you know, and every one else at Fentown knows, that it is my duty to see that you don't communicate with him. You've fooled me to-night, and I'll have to keep closer watch; but if you don't want me to do the watching, I can pay another man."
She had hoped faintly that he would have shown himself less resolute; now there was only one thing to be done. After all, she had known for days that she might be obliged to do it.
"I wouldn't take it so hard, Bart, if it was any one but you," she said softly. She went on to say other things of this sort which would make it appear that there was in her heart an inward softness toward him which she had never yet revealed. With womanly instinct she played her little part well and did not exaggerate; but she was not speaking now to the man of drug-weakened mind and over-stimulated sense whom she had known in former years.
He spoke with pain and shame in his voice and attitude. "There isn't anything that I could do for you, Ann, that I wouldn't do as it is, without you pretending that way."
She did not quite take it in at first that she could not deceive him.
"I thought you used to care about me," she said; "I thought perhaps you did yet; I thought perhaps"—she put well-feigned shyness into her tone—"that you weren't the sort that would turn away from us just because of what father has done. All the other folks will, of course. I'm pretty much alone."
"I won't help you to break the laws, Ann. Law and righteousness is the same for the most part. Your feeling as a daughter leads you the other way, of course; but it ain't no good—it won't do any good to him in the long run, and it would be wrong for me to do anything but just what I ought to do as constable. When that's done we can talk of being friends if you like, but don't go acting a lie with the hope of getting the better of me. It hurts me to see you do it, Ann."
For the first time there dawned in her mind a new respect for him, but that did not alter her desperate resolve. She had been standing before him in the moonlight with downcast face; now she suddenly threw up her head with a gesture that reminded him of the way a drowning man throws up his hands.