“That's the trouble,” answered the old woman. “I understand Cynthia well enough to know that she will not be coerced in the matter. She is going to think it all over, and if she decides to go with him no power on earth will stop her. She looks already better satisfied. The only thing I can see is for me to try to stir up her sympathies in some way. She's tender-hearted; she'd hate to be the cause of my suffering. We must work together, and in secret, Brother Hillhouse.
“Work together, but how?” the preacher groaned. “I can't think of a thing to do. If I appealed to her on the score of my love for her she would only balance that off by his, and all she imagines the scoundrel suffers.”
“Oh, his trouble is real enough,” Mrs. Porter declared. “I tell you that in spite of my hatred for him, and even in spite of his cowardly insinuations against me ringing in my ears last night, I felt sorry for him. It would pierce a heart of stone to hear him talk as he did to her. If she resists, she will be a stronger woman than I would have been at her age and under the same circumstances. Pshaw! what would I have cared if I'd loved a man with all my heart and fate had deprived him of a name to give me—what would I have cared for the opinions of a little handful of people pent up here in the mountains when he was asking me to go with him out into the wide world and take my chances along with him? I don't know, Brother Hillhouse, but that I'd have gloried in the opportunity to say I was no better than he was. That's the way most women would look at it; that's the way, I'm afraid, she will look at it.”
The preacher turned upon her, cold fury snapping in his eyes and voice. “You talk that way—you!” he snarled—“and you her mother! You are almost arguing that because his father and mother branded him as they did that he and Cynthia have a right to—to brand their—their own helpless offspring the same way. Sin can't be compromised with.”
“Ah, you are right. I wasn't looking far enough ahead,” Mrs. Porter acknowledged. “No, we must save her. Heaven could not possibly bless such a step as that. I want her to hear somebody talk on that line. Say, Brother Hillhouse, if I can get her to come to church to-morrow, could you not, in a roundabout way, touch on that idea?”
“God knows I am willing to try anything—anything!” the minister said, despondently. “Yes, bring her, if she will come. She seems to listen to me. I'll do my best.”
“Well, I'll bring her,” Mrs. Sorter promised. “Good-morning. I'd better get back. They will wonder what's keeping me.”