“No temporizing, Mr. Crocker,” she went on, as though she meant to be obeyed; “sit down there, and let's have it out. I like you too well to quarrel with you.”
There was no resisting such a command, and I threw myself on the pebbles at her feet.
“I thought we were going to be great friends,” she said. “You and Mr. Farrar were so kind to me on the night of my arrival, and we had such fun watching the dance together.”
“I confess I thought so, too. But you expressed opinions then that I shared. You have since changed your mind, for some unaccountable reason.”
She paused in her polishing, a shining dish in her hand, and looked down at me with something between a laugh and a frown.
“I suppose you have never regretted speaking hastily,” she said.
“Many a time,” I returned, warming; “but if I ever thought a judgment measured and distilled, it was your judgment of the Celebrity.”
“Does the study of law eliminate humanity?” she asked, with a mock curtsey. “The deliberate sentences are sometimes the unjust ones, and men who are hung by weighed wisdom are often the innocent.”
“That is all very well in cases of doubt. But here you have the evidences of wrong-doing directly before you.”
Three dishes were taken up, dried, and put down before she answered me. I threw pebbles into the brook, and wished I had held my tongue.