Mary Lincoln doubtless had this in mind when she whispered to her father the evening before the trial, "You will speak for him, will you not, father?"
"I cannot tell," said Richard Lincoln. "Why should I, Mary? His desert is death, and I should not know what to say in his behalf."
"But if all of us were treated according to our deserts, how few of us would escape scathing. Only you, father; I know of no one beside."
The patriot looked down at the pale girl sitting at his feet and stroked her hair. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she gazed at him imploringly. He knew her secret to the uttermost now. She had told him, all the evening of that dreadful day when London saw her throw down a rose to her country's traitor. Still, if it were to do again, would she not do it? Her love was stronger than her sense of shame.
Richard Lincoln sat and gazed into the fire. These were indeed troublesome times, but a light seemed breaking just below where the clouds lowered darkest. A week had seen a great change in public sentiment. Debate in Parliament had been fierce and bitter. At the head of his party he had striven to show that those who held the reins of power abused and deceived the masses, and that true liberty lay not in ignorant usurpation of right, but intelligent recognition of a lawfully constituted authority which regarded all alike. At first his purpose had been misinterpreted, but as by degrees the true significance of his words were grasped by the popular mind, groans gave place to silence, and sullenness to cheers. He had not hesitated to wield the axe of reform with a yeoman's hand, and the flying chips told of the havoc he was making among the dead wood of ignorance and craft. It was his aim to demonstrate that a demagogue in the seat of power is no less a menace to the happiness of the people than an aristocrat.
Yet in the face of his triumph arose the shadow of this strange, unnatural love; for it seemed unnatural to him that his only child should have given her heart to one whose ambition it was to destroy that which he had helped to establish and bring back the frippery of an unhallowed past. He had found it difficult at first to conceive it as possible, but her confession, and more eloquently still her pallid cheeks, left no room to question the truth of this misfortune. And to-morrow he would be called upon to doom to the scaffold the man whose being had become so much a part of hers as to have led her to play the traitor also. As thus he pondered the breaking light seemed to fade from the sky, and the clouds lowered gloomy and impenetrable.
"Father," said Mary again, "I am sure you can save him."
Lincoln shook his head. "Not even if I would, girl," he replied, sternly.
"You, too, desert me," she murmured. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then with a sudden impulse she stood, tall and resolute. Her eyes flashed fire. "If it is wrong to love a traitor, let it be so. I cannot help loving John Dacre, and I should like to die with him."
Richard Lincoln gazed at her in amazement. There was pride, too, in his glance. He saw in her transfigured face a repetition of his own youth when the spirit soared impatient of restraint and knew not yet the curbs that check the extravagance of ardent natures. In those early days he had struck out for the ideal right, even as her heart in the fulness of its love poured out its tide of passion. He held out his hands to her, and his lips trembled.