"How do I know? Some that have reason to profit by his accusation, yet fear to press the trial to the end. Perchance the fathers of St. Inigo's."
Giles Brent was furious, all the more that the same possibility had been floating dimly in his own mind. He answered coldly,—
"Since thou art so lost to all sense of dignity and decency in the cause of thy lover as to accuse Holy Church herself rather than admit what one who runs may read, that he hath done a dastardly deed and then hath run away to escape the consequences, why, I will waste neither argument nor entreaty, but when the day comes that all is made clear, thou wilt have a heavy account to settle."
"I know not how it may be in the future of this world, Giles; but when the day comes that the secrets of all hearts are laid open, I feel sure as that I stand here that Christopher Neville will have naught to fear. For myself my shame will be that I loved not too much, but too little. To love cautiously is not to love at all. For thee, thy punishment—the hardest, I believe, for a just man—shall be to see too late the wrong thou hast done; the friendship lightest held where it should have been strongest, the faith withheld where the hand should have been outstretched in aid, the life sacrificed that should have been a bulwark to the state,—all this will be laid at thy door—"
Then,—with a sudden break,—"God forgive me! What a hypocrite I am! My sin is heavier than thine. I knew him, I loved him, and I failed him. Death holds no bitterness like this."
Without another word she turned and left him.
Brent fell back, awed by the force of her passion, and stood still watching her as she swept on, a tall vision of Nemesis, vague and gray in the mist that clung about the long folds of her cloak. On she walked, slowly at first, then faster and faster till she was almost running. At the third bend of the path a man slipped out from behind the twisted pine, and fell in with her step so naturally that she was scarcely conscious of his companionship.
There was a softness in Ralph Ingle's silence, a soothing quality in his sympathy that made itself felt. Elinor's gait slowed, and she removed the hands that had been pressed to her temples, as if to quiet the intolerable throbbing pain.
"Pity me!"—Ralph Ingle spoke low.