“Now I can understand your love, brother, and your strong heroism in defying society for a woman’s sake. This dear Joan is blood of my blood, heart of my heart. In two days we have become as sisters. Ah, Gabriel, I would trust her, even if she had come to me from the gate of hell. But methinks she is more like Beatrice out of paradise.”
From such sisterly exultation Judith digressed to speak of John Strong:
“Father has aged since the autumn. He is whiter and stoops a little, and his eyes look tired. Poor father! he has always been a hard man, but I believe the ice is broken about his heart. Would to God he would be less proud! And yet I love this pride of his when he faces the prattlers here like a Brutus, and frowns back those he does not trust.
“Moreover, I am convinced that father has changed his opinions greatly, though he says but little. That woman—pardon me, Gabriel, for I hate her—has been brazening it about like any countess. That she is none too honest I would stake my soul. We of Gabingly and Saltire are like border barons locked in a death feud. Maltravers. Have you ever heard the name from Ophelia’s lips? Father has hinted that he has had his suspicions aroused by some casual circumstances that have been brought to his notice. Would to Heaven he would be more frank with me!
“Now, Gabriel, my own brother, let me plead with you as a sister. Joan must remain here; I have my reasons, and a woman’s wit is worth more than a lawyer’s tongue. As for yourself, stay in London till I bid you come.
“Joan is well. See, I enclose a short letter from her. Also a little money out of my allowance. Use it, dear Gabriel, and God bless you!
“Pardon the vagueness of all this; I write in great haste.
“Judith.”
Gabriel sat there in the twilight with the letters and bank-notes laid upon his knee. From without came the sound of a woman singing, singing in one of the dim and narrow rooms below his window. To Gabriel it seemed for the moment as the voice of some aspiring spirit climbing from the squalor of life into the more splendid land of dreams. It was but a poor, struggling child of art who sang, mocking with her melody the coarse cares of a loveless world.
He took Joan’s letter and read it as through a mist, halting often as though to hold and possess each word.