“You can’t change me—I told her so. I won’t forgive her! You’re all very well, Edward, but you can’t preach to me. I sha’n’t listen. I’m an old man, as you say——”
“I didn’t!” interrupted the dean. “And I’m older than you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m an old man, and she’s all I’ve got. I felt I had influenced her, I had helped along the match; to get her free would have been to free my conscience of a load, too, and she knew it. She knew it so well that she ran off without saying good-by. Ran off to go to him, and—she doesn’t love him!”
“She married him; I think she does.”
The judge shook his head.
“She doesn’t,” he insisted. “She admitted as much to me.”
Receiving no reply to this, the judge rose and threw open another window. He felt oppressed for breath.
“If it comes out—if it all comes out—and it may—it’ll break her heart. If I’d had any idea of what he was, of how he was lying to us, trading on another man’s achievements, playing on us, I’d—I’d have shot him dead before I’d have let him cross my threshold! Oh! I know what you’ve got to say, but you can save yourself the trouble. I sha’n’t listen!”
The little dean got up. Like Overton, he sought his hat. Unlike Overton, however, he stopped to look mildly at the judge.
“She’s done right,” he persisted. “At the first sign of trouble, you’ll forgive her.”