"Michael, dear Michael," she said, "it is for your own good that I want to leave you, so that the great promise of your life may not be wasted. It is I who am breaking in upon it. And I am nothing. Let me go."
"It is too late, Greeba. As poor man and poor woman we must pass the rest of our life together."
At that she burst into sobs again, blaming her brothers, and telling of their mean mission, and how she resented it, and what revenge of wicked slander they had wreaked upon her.
"You see it is all an error," she cried: "a cruel, cruel error."
"No, Greeba, it is not all an error," he answered. "It is not an error that you deceived me—and lied to me."
At that word her tears fell back, and the fire of her heart was in her eyes in an instant. "You say that, do you?" she cried. "Ah, then, perhaps there has been yet another error than you think of—the error of throwing him away for sake of you. He is noble, and simple, and true. His brave heart is above all suspicion. God pity him, and forgive me!"
Then for the first time that day since the six Fairbrothers had left the house, the calmness of Michael Sunlocks forsook him, and in a stern voice, with a look of fierce passion in his face, he cried, "Let me never, never meet that man. Five years ago I came here to save him, but now if we ever come face to face it will be the hour of his death or mine."