“If I were a girl and I loved him,” said Rust, still thinking of the case of his friend, “why—I think perhaps I should.”
“But if you hated and loathed him?” Garde almost cried.
“Oh, that is quite a different matter. If hate entered in, I should welcome any excuse to get away. In the actual case of which I was thinking, it seems to me the girl ought to forgive——But I had forgotten all about the element of the charter, which we were supposing was to figure in the case.”
Garde cared for nothing further about the discussion. He had justified her, at least partially. She had always felt that Randolph would have betrayed the colony, even had she sacrificed herself and Adam, to marry him, as her grandfather had desired. She was now a little troubled that Adam could think so nearly as her grandfather had done; that he could really condone such a terrible dishonor in a fellow-man. Had it not been that, under cover of her present disguise she had proved how true and good her Adam was, she would have been pained and perhaps worried by his latitude of thought. She had to finish the subject, so she said:
“If she—this girl—not only hated the man, but felt sure he would not keep his promise to do good for the charter, but would deceive her and every one else, just as he had deceived the other girl—then what ought she to do?”
“It would be high time, under those circumstances,” replied her companion, “to refuse absolutely, or to ship on the first departing vessel, or to do anything else that would be quick and to the point.”
“That is just what I think,” said Garde, now well satisfied.
“It’s more important for us, my boy, to think of what we shall do when we arrive in Boston, to-morrow,” Adam now remarked. “By the way, do you know anybody there?”
Garde hesitated before answering. She had to be clever. “Nobody there will know me when I get there,” she said, “unless it is some one I might once have known.”
Rust did not analyze the ambiguity of this reply. He was engrossed with other reflections.