“I hope in none that—that——”
“As a murderess,” Clyne answered in the same tone of restrained fury. “She has conspired against a child! A boy who never harmed her, and now never could have harmed her! She is not worthy of the name of woman! I thank God that He has helped me to keep her out of my mind as I rode to-day. And you—you must needs bring her up again! Know that I loathe and detest her, sir, and pray that I may never see her, never hear her name again!”
Mr. Sutton raised his hands in horror.
“You are unjust!” he cried. “Indeed, indeed, you are unjust!”
“What is that to you? And who are you to talk to me? Is it your child who is missing? Your child who is being tortured, perhaps out of life? Who, a cripple, is being dragged at these men’s heels? You? You? What have you to do with this?”
The tone was crushing. But the chaplain, too, had his stubborn side, and resentment flamed within him as he thought of the girl and her lot. “Do I understand then,” he said—he was very pale—“that you refuse to hear what I have by chance discovered—in Miss Damer’s favour?”
“I do.”
“That you will not, Captain Clyne, even look at this letter—this letter which I have found and which exonerates her?”
“Never!” Clyne replied harshly. “Never! And, now you know my mind, go, sir, and do not return to this subject! This is no time for trifling, nor am I in the mood.”
But the chaplain held his ground, though he was very nervous. And a resolution, great and heroic, took shape within him, growing in a moment to full size—he knew not how. He raised his meagre figure to its full height, and his pale peaky face assumed a dignity which the pulpit had never known. “I, too, am in no mood for trifling, Captain Clyne,” he said. “But I do not hold this matter trifling. On the contrary, I wish you to understand that I think it so important that I consider it my duty to press it upon you by every means in my power!”