“Maybe I know—I believe I do—but I want now to know whether you're a liar, as I suspect you to be, or whether you are honest enough to tell the truth.”
“Do you suspect me, then?”
“I do suspect you; or rather I don't—bekaise I know the truth. Answer me—who were you spakin' with?”
“Troth,” said she, “I was lookin' at your sweetheart in the well,” meaning her own shadow, “and was only asking her how she did.”
“You danced with Harry-na-Suil Balor last night?”
“I did; because the gentleman axed me—and why would I refuse him?”
“You whispered in a corner with him?”
“I did not,” she replied; “how could I when the room was so throng?”
“Ay, betther in a throng room than a thin one; ay, and you promised to meet him at the well to-night; and you kept your word.”
A woman's courage and determination to persist in falsehood are never so decided and deliberate as when she feels that the suspicion expressed against her is true. She then gets into heroics and attempts to turn the tables upon her opponent, especially when she knows, as Miss Davoren did on this occasion, that he has nothing but suspicion to support him. She knew that her lover had been at the bonfire, and that his friends must have seen her dance with Woodward; and this she did not attempt to deny, because she could not; but as for their tryst at the well, she felt satisfied, from her knowledge of his jealous and violent character, that if he had been aware of it, it would not have been by seeking the fact through the medium of his threats and her fears that he would have proceeded. Had he seen Woodward, for instance, and herself holding a secret meeting in such a place and at such an hour, she concluded justly that the middogue or dagger, for the use of which he had been already so celebrated, would have been brought into requisition against either one or both.