'I am certain.'
'Missie,' he said, raising his despairing face, 'look at the position I am in. You are but a child, but your kind heart can understand as few older persons seem to do. If I go to see Dick Peet, I am proclaiming my sin to the world; and who is the sufferer?—my mother! I deserve no mercy, and for my own sake I would not spare myself one grain of shame or misery, for it was a black deed, brutally done in a frenzy of envy. But Mother—ah! Missie, you don't know what a mother she has been to me. She has sacrificed her whole life, and does not think it a sacrifice!'
'But if Dick can and does forgive, Jack,' said Estelle, 'would not Goody be glad that you have it from his own lips? Would she not feel you were better, more the real kind Jack she loves, if you asked for that forgiveness, though Dick does give it so freely? Oh, Jack, here is your chance of making amends; here is your chance of telling Dick how grieved your are.'
There was a long silence.
'I'll do it,' said Jack, rousing himself. 'I'll speak to my mother to-night.'
He started up and walked to the cliff, and stood close to the edge, as if he wanted to get as far away from the earth as possible.
Estelle buried her face in her hands, and longed for Aunt Betty, for Goody, for anybody wiser and older than herself. How long she sat, her mind full of hopes and prayers, she did not know. Suddenly she became conscious of some movement near. Looking up, startled, she saw Thomas creeping up to Jack. Jack's back was towards him, and one push would have sent him off the edge of the cliff, into the depths below. She screamed in her terror. Jack turned and faced his enemy.
Thomas did not retreat. He was too desperate. His hopes were dead, and his sole chance was in destroying the man who stood in his path. He flung himself upon Jack, with a confused notion that if he could not hurl him over the cliff, they might both go over together. At any rate, Jack should not get that profit out of the Earl's daughter to which he thought he himself had the sole right. He fought in wild despair, striking out, clinging to Jack's arms and legs, and throwing his weight on him in the mad effort to bear him down, or force him over the precipice. Jack could not understand his insane fury, and tried at first simply to overpower him, in order to hear what he was about, and ask him questions. But Thomas had no intention of being questioned. He wanted to get rid of this man once and for all. If Estelle had not screamed, he would have done it, too. He would pay her out for that, he thought, if he could be the winner in this struggle.
To his dismay, however, he found he was getting decidedly the worst of it. Jack was a giant in strength as well as in height. Finding the man would not listen to reason, he put out his strength, and Thomas soon found himself spinning along the ground at breakneck speed, considerably the worse for the handling he had received. Stunned and bruised, he lay like a log where he fell, and Jack let him lie, after a glance to see he was not much hurt.
Taking Estelle's hand, Jack led her towards the village, but the little girl, upset and shaken as she was by the fierce struggle she had witnessed, looked back once or twice at the prostrate Thomas. Jack appeared excited and angry, but did not speak all the way home.