“I do not believe it,” I answered.
“Remember what John Jago has suffered at the hands of my brothers,” she persisted. “Is it not in your experience that he should take a sudden resolution to leave the farm?”
I replied, as plainly as before,
“It is not in my experience.”
She stood looking at me for a moment with a face of blank despair; then bowed her gray head in silence, and left me. As she crossed the room to the door, I saw her look upward; and I heard her say to herself softly, between her teeth, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
It was the requiem of John Jago, pronounced by the woman who loved him.
When I next saw her, her mask was on once more. Miss Meadowcroft was herself again. Miss Meadowcroft could sit by, impenetrably calm, while the lawyers discussed the terrible position of her brothers, with the scaffold in view as one of the possibilities of the “case.”
Left by myself, I began to feel uneasy about Naomi. I went upstairs, and, knocking softly at her door, made my inquiries from outside. The clear young voice answered me sadly, “I am trying to bear it: I won’t distress you when we meet again.” I descended the stairs, feeling my first suspicion of the true nature of my interest in the American girl. Why had her answer brought the tears into my eyes? I went out, walking alone, to think undisturbedly. Why did the tones of her voice dwell on my ear all the way? Why did my hand still feel the last cold, faint pressure of her fingers when I led her out of court?
I took a sudden resolution to go back to England.
When I returned to the farm, it was evening. The lamp was not yet lighted in the hall. Pausing to accustom my eyes to the obscurity indoors, I heard the voice of the lawyer whom we had employed for the defense speaking to some one very earnestly.