‘But, papa’—Barbara was sick with terror—’you told me that this stood as a bar between him and Eve?’
‘No—Barbara. I said that there was a barrier, but not this. Of this I was ignorant.’
The room swam round with Barbara. She uttered a faint cry, and put the back of her clenched hands against her mouth to choke another rising cry. ‘I have betrayed him! My God! My God! What have I done?’
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
CALLED TO ACCOUNT.
‘Go,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘bring Eve to me.’
Barbara obeyed mechanically. She had betrayed Jasper. Her father would not spare him. The granite walls of Prince’s Town prison rose before her, in the midst of a waste as bald as any in Greenland or Siberia. She called her sister, bade her go into her father’s room, and then, standing in the hall, placed her elbows on the window ledge, and rested her brow and eyes in her palms. She was consigning Jasper back to that miserable jail. She was incensed against him. She knew that he was unworthy of her regard, that he had forfeited all right to her consideration, and yet—she pitied him. She could not bring herself to believe that he was utterly bad; to send him again to prison was to ensure his complete ruin.
‘Eve,’ said Mr. Jordan, when his youngest daughter came timidly into the room, ‘tell me, whom did you meet on the Raven Rock?’
The girl hung her head and made no reply. She stood as a culprit before a judge, conscious that his case is hopeless.