In truth she would have fallen had he not again assisted her. She turned upon him eyes whose reproachful sorrow had almost forced him to a confession, but he bowed his head and held silence. They reached the house, and he placed her tenderly in a chair. “Now you are safe, madam, I will leave you.”
She burst into tears. “Why do you treat me thus, Mr. North? What have I done to make you hate me?”
“Hate you!” said North, with trembling lips. “Oh, no, I do not—do not hate you. I am rude in my speech, abrupt in my manner. You must forget it, and—and me.” A horse's feet crashed upon the gravel, and an instant after Maurice Frere burst into the room. Returning from the Cascades, he had met Troke, and learned the release of the prisoner. Furious at this usurpation of authority by his wife, his self-esteem wounded by the thought that she had witnessed his mean revenge upon the man he had so infamously wronged, and his natural brutality enhanced by brandy, he had made for the house at full gallop, determined to assert his authority. Blind with rage, he saw no one but his wife. “What the devil's this I hear? You have been meddling in my business! You release prisoners! You—”
“Captain Frere!” said North, stepping forward to assert the restraining presence of a stranger. Frere started, astonished at the intrusion of the chaplain. Here was another outrage of his dignity, another insult to his supreme authority. In its passion, his gross mind leapt to the worst conclusion. “You here, too! What do you want here—with my wife! This is your quarrel, is it?” His eyes glanced wrathfully from one to the other; and he strode towards North. “You infernal hypocritical lying scoundrel, if it wasn't for your black coat, I'd—”
“Maurice!” cried Sylvia, in an agony of shame and terror, striving to place a restraining hand upon his arm. He turned upon her with so fiercely infamous a curse that North, pale with righteous rage, seemed prompted to strike the burly ruffian to the earth. For a moment, the two men faced each other, and then Frere, muttering threats of vengeance against each and all—convicts, gaolers, wife, and priest—flung the suppliant woman violently from him, and rushed from the room. She fell heavily against the wall, and as the chaplain raised her, he heard the hoof-strokes of the departing horse.
“Oh,” cried Sylvia, covering her face with trembling hands, “let me leave this place!”
North, enfolding her in his arms, strove to soothe her with incoherent words of comfort. Dizzy with the blow she had received, she clung to him sobbing. Twice he tried to tear himself away, but had he loosed his hold she would have fallen. He could not hold her—bruised, suffering, and in tears—thus against his heart, and keep silence. In a torrent of agonized eloquence the story of his love burst from his lips. “Why should you be thus tortured?” he cried. “Heaven never willed you to be mated to that boor—you, whose life should be all sunshine. Leave him—leave him. He has cast you off. We have both suffered. Let us leave this dreadful place—this isthmus between earth and hell! I will give you happiness.”
“I am going,” she said faintly. “I have already arranged to go.”
North trembled. “It was not of my seeking. Fate has willed it. We go together!”
They looked at each other—she felt the fever of his blood, she read his passion in his eyes, she comprehended the “hatred” he had affected for her, and, deadly pale, drew back the cold hand he held.