“I would have kept my promise, father. I would have kept it, no matter if—I would have been faithful to him if he—” Suddenly Dorothy turned on Burr with a gasp of terror and defiance. “I would never have done this, you know,” she cried; “it would never have come to this, if you had spoken and told me you were innocent.”
“What do you mean, child?” said Parson Fair, sternly.
“He would not tell me that he did not stab his cousin Lot,” replied Dorothy, setting her sweet mouth doggedly. Her blue eyes met her father's with shrinking and yet steadfast defiance.
“Dorothy,” said he, “do you not know that he is innocent by his cousin's own confession?”
“Why, then, does he not say so?” finished Dorothy. “How do I know who did it? Madelon Hautville said she was guilty, then Lot Gordon; and Burr would not deny his guilt when I asked him. How do I know which? Madelon Hautville was trying to shield him; I am not blind. Then Lot liked her. How do I know which?” Suddenly she cried out to Burr so loud that the people in the entry below heard her, “Tell me now that you are innocent, and either your cousin Lot or Madelon Hautville guilty,” she demanded. “Tell me!”
Burr, white and rigid, looked at her, and made no reply. “Tell me,” she cried, in her sweet, shrill voice, “tell me now that you did not stab your cousin Lot, and Madelon Hautville spoke the truth, and I will keep my promise to you, even if my heart is not yours.”
Parson Fair grasped his daughter's arm again. “No man whom you have promised to wed should reply to such distrust as this,” he said. “Dorothy, I command you to go down-stairs and be married to this man.”
Then Dorothy broke away from him with a wild shriek. “No, I will not marry this man with his cousin's blood on his soul! I will not, father; you shall not make me! I will not! Night and day I shall see that knife in his hand. I will not marry him, because he tried to kill his cousin Lot. I will not, I will not!” The black woman pushed between them with a savage murmur of love and wrath, and caught her mistress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over her young.
“There is no use in prolonging this, sir,” Burr said to Parson Fair.
The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless dignity and sympathy and wrath. “You know that I have no share in this,” he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his mother. “I could never have believed that my daughter—”