'Is that man—that—Golden—is he your friend?'
'Of course he is,' said Mr Burton roughly, with a certain defiance. 'You are prejudiced against him unjustly. But he is my friend, and a very good fellow too.'
'Then it is better not to say any more,' said Helen rising, trembling in every limb. 'It is best not to say any more. Oh don't venture to name his name to me! If I had not been a woman, I should have—not killed him. That would have been too good. Innocent men are killed, and you others look on, and never lift a finger. I would have pursued him till his last breath—crushed him—made him feel what he has done. And I will—if I have the power!'
She stood up confronting her cousin, trembling, yet glowing with that passion which the name of her husband's slanderer always roused within her. She was almost as tall as Burton was, and he felt as if she towered over him, and was cowed by the strength of her emotion. He rose too, but he shrank back a step, not knowing how to meet the spirit he had roused.
'These are nice Christian sentiments,' he said, with an attempt at a sneer; but in his heart the man was afraid.
'I ask nobody what kind of sentiments they are,' she cried. 'If he had wronged me only, I would have forgiven him. But no man shall say his name before me—no man! I may not have the power; my friends may not have the power; but it is that, and not the will, which will fail if we fail. I will never give up trying to punish him, never in my life!'
'Then you will be acting like a fool,' Mr Burton said; but he changed his tone, and took a great deal of trouble to persuade her to take her seat again, and discuss the matter calmly with him.
Norah stood up-stairs by the window, watching till he should go. The child's heart was bursting with rage and pain. She had never been sent away before; she had heard everything, had been always present whatever was going on. Her father, Dr Maurice, Mr Haldane, every one of them had spoken in her presence all that they had to say. And she remembered words that no one else remembered, scraps of talk which she could put together. She did so with a violent exercise of her memory as she stood there drumming on the window, and wondering when he would go. 'He thinks I am only a child,' she said to herself, in the fiery commotion of her spirits, and thought of a hundred things she could do to prove the contrary. She would go to Dr Maurice; she would let 'everybody' know. He was no friend; he was a conspirator against them—one of those who killed her father. Every moment that passed inflamed Norah more. She stood at the window and watched, thinking would he never be gone, thinking, oh why could not she make herself grow—make herself a woman! What her mother had done was nothing to what Norah felt herself capable of doing. Every vein in her body, and every nerve had begun to thrill and tremble before she heard the sound down-stairs of the door opening, and saw him go hastily away.
This was what he said when he opened the door of the sitting-room down-stairs—
'You will do what you please, of course. I have found out before now what it is to struggle with an unreasonable woman. Do what you like. Drag your husband's name through the dirt again. Throw all sorts of new light on his motives. That is what you will do. People might have forgotten it; but after what you are going to do, they will never forget. And that is all you will have for your pains—you may be sure you can do nothing to us.'