"Been to France, I s'pose?" said Reuben in a tone which conveyed his suspicions.
"No," replied Eve, determined not to seem ashamed of their occupation: "I think they've been to Guernsey."
"Oh, well, all the same, so far as what they went to fetch. Then they're going to try and land their cargo, I s'pose?"
"I don't know what they may be going to try and do"—and Eve endeavored to imitate the sneer with which Reuben had emphasized the word—"but I know that trying with them means doing. There's nobody about here," she added with a borrowed spice of Joan's manner, "would care to put themselves in the way of trying to hinder the Lottery."
"'Tis strange, then, that they shouldn't choose to come in open daylight, rather than be sneaking in under cover of a dark night," said Reuben aggravatingly.
"As it happens," retorted Eve, with an assumption of superior nautical knowledge, "the dark night suits them best, by reason that at high tide they can come in close to Down End. Oh, you needn't try to think you can hurt me by your sneers at them," she said, inwardly smarting under the contempt she knew Reuben felt. "I feel hurt at your wanting to say such things, but not at all at what you say. That can't touch me."
"No, so I see," said Reuben hopelessly. Then, after a minute's pause, he burst out with a passionate, "Oh, Eve, I feel as if I could take and jump into the sea with you, so as I might feel you'd be safe from the life I'm certain you're goin' to be dragged down to. You may think fair now of this man, because he's only showed you his fair side; but they who know him know him for what he is—bloodthirsty, violent, a drunkard, never sober, with his neck in a noose and the gallows swinging over his head. What hold will you have over one who fears neither God nor devil? Yes, but I will speak. You shall listen to the truth from me," for she had tried to interrupt him. "It isn't too late, and 'tis but fit that you know what others say of him."
Eve's anger had risen until she seemed turned into a fury, and her voice, usually low and full, now sounded hard and sharp as she cried, "If they said a hundred times worse of him I would still marry him; and if he stood on the gallows, that you say swings over his head, I'd stand by his side and say I was his wife."
"God pity you!" groaned Reuben.
"I want no pity," she said, "and so you can tell those who would throw it away on me. Say to them that you sought me out to cast taunts at me, but it was of no use, for what you thought I should be ashamed of I gloried in, and could look you and all the world in the face"—and she seemed to grow taller as she spoke—"and say I felt proud to be a smuggler's wife;" and, turning, she made a movement as if to go.