“Leave the finding him to me,” persisted Tod. “Will you withdraw the embargo you laid upon me?”
“No, no,” she whispered, “I cannot do it.”
The trees had an uncommonly damp feel in the night-air, and the place altogether looked as weird as could be. I was away then in the underwood; she looked down always into the Ravine and called Hugh’s name aloud. Nothing but an echo answered.
“It has appeared to me for several days that you have feared something of this,” Tod said, trying to get a full view of her face. “It might have been better for—for all of us—if you had allowed me at first to take the affair in hand.”
“Perhaps I ought; perhaps I ought,” she said, bursting into tears. “Heaven knows, though, that I acted from a good motive. It was not to screen myself that I’ve tried to keep the matter secret.”
“Oh!” The sarcasm of Tod’s short comment was like nothing I ever heard. “To screen me, perhaps?” said he.
“Well, yes—in a measure, Joseph,” she patiently answered. “I only wished to spare you vexation. Oh, Joseph! if—if Hugh cannot be found, and—and all has to come out—who he is and what he wants here—remember that I wished nothing but to spare others pain.”
Tod’s eyes were blazing with angry, haughty light. Spare him! He thought she was miserably equivocating; he had some such idea as that she sought (in words) to make him a scape-goat for her relative’s sins. What he answered I hardly know; except that he civilly dared her to speak.
“Do not spare me: I particularly request you will not,” he scornfully retorted. “Yourself as much as you will, but not me.”
“I have done it for the best,” she pleaded. “Joseph, I have done it all for the best.”