Ann put down her sheet and went to the fireplace, and with the tip of her coarse, gaping shoe she pushed some burning embers under a three-legged pot on the stone hearth. With her tongs she lifted the iron lid and looked at a corn-pone browning within, and then she replaced it. Her brow was deeply wrinkled.
"You told me everything that happened that night, if I remember right," she said, tentatively. "In fact, I know you did."
Virginia said nothing; her thoughts seemed elsewhere.
Leaning the tongs against the fireplace, Ann came forward and bent over her almost excitedly.
"Look here, child," she said, "you told me that—that I got there in time. You told me—"
"I told you all I thought was necessary for you to understand the situation," said Virginia, her eyes downcast, "but I didn't tell you all I'd have to tell Luke King—to be his wife."
"You say you didn't." Ann sat down heavily in her chair. "Then be plain with me; what under the sun did you leave out?"
"I left out the fact that I was crazy that night," said Virginia. "I read in a book once that a woman is so constituted that she can't see reason in anything which does not coincide with her desires. I saw only one thing that night that was worth considering. I saw only the awful suffering of my mother and the chance to put an end to it by getting hold of that man's money. Do you understand now? I went there for that purpose. I'd have laid down my life for it. When those men came he urged me to run and hide in his room, as he and I stood on the veranda, and it was not fear of exposure that drove me up the stairs holding to his hand. It was the almost appalling fear that the promised money would slip through my fingers if I didn't obey him to the letter. And when he whispered, with his hot breath in my ear, there in his room, as his friends were loudly knocking at the door below, that he would rid himself of them and come back, and asked me if I'd wait, I said yes, as I would, have said it to God in heaven. Then he asked me if it was 'a promise,' and I said yes again. Then he asked me, Mrs. Boyd, he asked me—"
Virginia's voice died out. She fell to quivering from head to foot.
"Well, well, go on!" Ann said, under her breath. "Go on. What did he ask you?"