He trembled as he spoke, and sat again and shivered, and a cold chill ran down his back.
"Mona," he said, half in a sob, "do you believe in omens?"
She did not reply. Her breast heaved visibly, and she could not speak.
"Tush!" he said, in another voice, "omens!" and he laughed bitterly, and rose again and picked up his hat, and then said, in a quieter way, "Only, as I say, they're taking the wrong way with me, Mona."
He had opened the door, and she had turned her swimming eyes toward him.
"It was bad enough to make himself a stranger to me, but why did he want to make you a stranger, too? Stranger, stranger!" He echoed the word in a mocking accent, and threw back his head.
"Dan," said Mona, in a low, passionate tone, and the blinding tears rained down her cheeks, "nothing and nobody can make us strangers, you and me—not my father, or your dear father, or Ewan, or"—she dropped her voice to a deep whisper—"or any misfortune or any disgrace."
"Mona!" he cried, and took a step toward her, and stretched out one arm with a yearning gesture.
But at the next moment he had swung about, and was going out at the door. At sight of all that tenderness and loyalty in Mona's face his conscience smote him as it had never smitten him before.
"Ewan was right, Mona. He is the noblest man on God's earth, and I am the foulest beast on it."