"I am thankful that this cannot be!" said Orrin, composedly. I understand him better than you do in some respects. To doubt is to insult him. One sentence of 'accusation,' and your power over him is gone forever. Be guided by me, Jessie! You are not in a fit condition to decide for yourself upon your safest mode of action at this critical juncture. It is an oft-repeated maxim of human law that every man is innocent until proof brings his guilt home to him. Two things are patent from our present standpoint. When Roy asked you to marry him, he was free to do so,—the previous engagement, assuming that such had ever existed, having been dissolved some months earlier than the date of his proposal to you. Again—and on this head I can speak confidently—he is thoroughly satisfied that his choice is a judicious one. This is not the first time I have wanted to say this to you. He may not be an ardent suitor, because his is not a passionate nature, nor is he given to demonstrations of emotion. But he is more than contented. He is sincerely attached to you—"
"Which means that he will fulfil his part of the contract of marriage unless my sister should die of consumption before the wedding-day arrives!" Jessie checked his defence of his kinsman by saying, with a rasping laugh.
Wyllys looked deeply pained.
"We will defer further conversation about this matter until you are calmer," he said, with a manifest struggle. "You are not ready for it just yet, or you would not sneer at my well-meant, if ineffectual, attempt to set your mind at rest."
"With unfeeling arguments! with special pleadings that freeze the blood at my heart!" she pursued, unappeased and desperate. "If this is the ablest defence you can set up for your client, you do well to defer the further consideration of it. I have prayed you for bread, and you give me a stone! I have said—'Let me have the plain truth!' and you tantalize me with fine-drawn theories and exhortations to patience and faith. I am tempted to believe that you are in the league to deceive me!"
"Jessie! Jessie! take care! You do not know what you are doing!"
It was entreaty—not reproach. He seemed to crave a personal boon—deliverance from impending trial of his strength or feelings. Jessie rushed on headlong, deaf to the significance of the petition.
"Your advocacy is worthy of the cause you have espoused! And while you expatiate upon your cousin's cool head and colder heart, and recommend me to make sure of this pattern partner—yes! that is the way you put it—I am being torn by pride and wounded affection and incertitude, as by raging wild horses! It is easy for you to talk sensibly and even eloquently of what appeals only to your reason!"
"Child!" seizing her elbows, and bringing her to a stand-still in the middle of the road, facing himself, "does it cost me nothing, do you think, to plead this cause? There are no wild horses for me then! No 'Might-have-been' dogging my steps and haunting my pillow! No furies of betrayed confidence and remorse menacing me! I tell you, your pettish jealousy, your slight heat of resentment that will be gone before to-morrow morning, is, in comparison with what I endure, a summer breeze to a tornado,—the flicker of a match to the fires of Gehenna!"
He released her, and she walked on beside him, bewildered and giddy; almost oblivious of her individual grievances in the thought of the passion that had fired his eyes, found vent in his hurried sentences. The sun was down. They were in a rough country-road; stone fences on either hand; the naked hedge-rows seeming to shiver in the still, freezing air. The hard orange dye of the west was beginning to melt slowly into a gray as cold. It was a heartless, dreesome afternoon.