"Yes, I heard her—damn her! I can't help it, Aurora."
"And you don't believe it—you know it isn't true?"
Octavius drew rein for a moment; lifted his cap and passed the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe off the sweat that stood in beads on it. He turned to the woman beside him; her dark eyes were devouring his face in the effort, or so it seemed, to anticipate his answer.
"Aurora, I've known you" (how he longed to say "loved you," but those were not words for him to speak to Aurora Googe after thirty years of silence) "ever since you was sixteen and old Mr. Googe took you, an orphan girl, into his home; and I knew Louis Champney from the time he was the same age till he died. What I've seen, I've seen; and what I know, I know. Louis Champney loved you better'n he loved his life, and I know you loved him; but if the Almighty himself should swear it's true what Almeda Googe said, I wouldn't believe him—I wouldn't!"
The terrible nervous strain from which the woman was suffering lessened under the influence of his speech. She leaned nearer.
"It was not true," she whispered again; "I know you'll believe me."
Her voice sounded weaker than before, and Octavius grew alarmed lest she have another of what Hannah termed a "sinking spell" then and there. He drew rein suddenly, and so tightly that the mare bounded forward and pulled at a forced pace up the hill to The Gore.
"And she thought that all these years—and I never knew. That's why she hates my boy and won't help—oh, how could she!"
She shivered again. Octavius urged the mare to greater exertion. If only he could get the stricken woman home before she had another turn.
"How could she?" he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What the dev—whoa, there Kitty, what you about?"