"My father thinks that the verdict will be manslaughter, or, at the worst, murder under strong provocation; but it is impossible to tell."
Awdrey looked again anxiously at his companion. Her pallor and distress aroused emotion in his breast which he found almost impossible to quiet.
"I'm sorry to my heart that you know about this," he said. "You are not fit to stand any of the roughness of life."
"What folly!" she answered, with passion. "What am I that I should accept the smooth and reject the rough? I tell you what I would like to do. I'd like to go this very moment to see that poor Mr. Everett, in order to tell him how deeply sorry I am for him. To ask him to tell me the story from first to last, from his point of view. To clear him from this awful stain. And I'd like to lay flowers over the breast of that dead boy. Oh, I can't bear it. Why is the world so full of trouble and pain?"
She burst into sudden tears.
"Don't, don't! Oh! Margaret, you're an angel. You're too good for this earth," said Awdrey.
"Nonsense," she answered; "let me have my cry out; I'll be all right in a minute."
Her brief tears were quickly over. She dashed them aside and rose to her feet.
"I hear the children shouting to me," she said. "I'm in no humor to meet them. Where shall we go?"
"This way," said Awdrey quickly; "no one knows the way through this copse but me."