"Hush, Cecil!" cried Elinor, clasping her hands over the boy's mouth. "Drop no hint that might spread another calumny. We who are suffering from that dread scourge should see to it that we lay not the lash to the back of another. Whoever the guilty one is, we must leave him to God, and I believe in my heart his suffering is greater than mine, or than any that ever Christopher Neville knew."
"Think you all souls are as sensitive as thine?" asked Ingle, gazing with reverence into the face so near and yet so infinitely far away.
"I know not; but I can conceive no nature so base that it would not writhe to see its just censure borne by another; and to be so sunk in sin as to feel nothing,—why, that would be most pitiable of all."
"It would," answered Ingle, and stood musing a moment; then he moved slowly away, walking backward that he might keep Elinor in view till the last. "Good-bye," he said finally, and turning strode hastily toward the gate nearest St. Gabriel's.
Elinor stood long in the doorway gazing after him, and then when he had quite vanished, gazing on into vacancy like one who sees the unseen and holds converse with spirits.
"Come, Cecil," she said at last, shaking off her lethargy with an effort, "fetch a pitcher, and we will go down to the Governor's Spring and draw water fresher than that which flows in our well."
Nothing loath, Cecil slipped one hand in his mother's and with the other swung the earthen pitcher to and fro, to the imminent risk of its brown nose.
When they reached the spring the two seated themselves on the stone curb with which by Calvert's orders the spring had been walled about. From the gravelly bank above, a group of tiny rivulets tumbled over each other in a laughing cascade. Held for a moment in the stone basin, they wandered onward to water the dell shaded by its thick growth of sycamores, elms, and holly-trees.
Spring was misting all the foliage with green, not the rich verdure of summer, but a tender yellow, deepening here and there into the full green glory of unfolded leaves.
Cecil leaned far over the curb, and laughed at his reflection in the spring.