‘Am I cruel?’ She turned and faced him again, with a threatening brow. ‘I have reason to be just. Cruel I am not.’
‘You were all gentleness at one time, when I was ill. Now——’
‘I will not dispute with you. Do you expect to be fed with a spoon still? When you were ill I treated you as a patient, not more kindly than I would have treated my deadliest enemy. I acted as duty prompted. There was no one else to take care of you, that was my motive—my only motive.’
‘When I think of your kindness then, I wish I were sick again.’
‘A mean and wicked wish. Tired already, I suppose, of doing honest work.’
‘Miss Barbara,’ he said, ‘pray let me speak.’
‘Cruel,’—she recurred to what he had said before, without listening to his entreaty, ‘It is you who are cruel coming here—you, with the ugly stain on your life, coming here to hide it in this innocent household. Would it not be cruel in a man with the plague poison in him to steal into a home of harmless women and children, and give them all the pestilence? Had I suspected that you intended making Morwell your retreat and skulking den, I would never have passed my promise to keep silence. I would have taken the hateful evidence of what you are in my hand, and gone to the first constable and bid him arrest you in your bed.’
‘No,’ said Jasper, ‘you would not have done it. I know you better than you know yourself. Are you lost to all humanity? Surely you feel pity in your gentle bosom, notwithstanding your bitter words.’
‘No,’ she answered, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, ‘no, I have pity only for myself, because I was weak enough to take pains to save your worthless life.’