“Your uncalled-for words shame me, not my actions. In being here with Captain Wayne to-night I am merely paying a simple debt of honor—a double debt, indeed, considering that he was condemned to death by your lie, while you deceived me by another.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He did not. Like the true gentleman he has ever shown himself to be, he endeavored to disguise the facts, to withhold from me all knowledge of your dastardly action. I know it by the infamous sentence pronounced against him and by your falsehood to me.”
“Edith, you mistake,” he urged anxiously. “I—I was told that he had been sent North.”
She drew a deep breath, as though she could scarcely grasp the full audacity of his pretence to ignorance.
“You appeared to be fully informed but now as to his death sentence.”
“Yes, I heard of it while away, and intended telling you as soon as I reached our quarters.”
I could feel the scorn of his miserable deception as it curled her lip, and her figure seemed to straighten between us.
“Then,” she said slowly, “you will doubtless agree that I have done no more than was right, and will therefore permit him this chance of escape from so unmerited a fate; for you know as well as I do that he has been wrongly condemned.”
He stepped forward with a half-smothered oath, and rested one hand heavily upon her shoulder.