Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/305

Rh Mrs. Saltren was seized with a fit of trembling, as if an ague were come over her. She stared at her husband, terror-stricken, and could not speak. A horrible thought, a sickening dread, had swept over her, and she shrank from asking a question which might receive an answer confirming her half-formulated fears.

"The judgment has tarried long, but the sentence has overtaken the sinner at last. Now, after all, he has been made to suffer for what he once did to you. He cast you down, and with like measure has it been meted to him. He is cast down."

"He did nothing to me."

"You are ready to forgive him now, and to forget the past, because you are a Christian. But eternal justice never forgets, it waits and watches, and when least expected, strikes down."

"Oh, Stephen! What are you thinking of? You listened to my idle talk. You fancy that Lord Lamerton was—was the father of Giles, but he was not. Indeed, indeed, he was not."

"He was not!" echoed the captain, standing stiffly with outstretched arms and clenched fists, a queer ungainly figure, jointless, as if made of wooden sticks. "You yourself told me that he was."

"I named no names. Indeed I never said he was—why, Stephen, how could he have been, when you know as well as I do, that he was out of England for three years at that time; he was attaché as they call it at the embassy in—I forget, some German Court, whilst I was at Orleigh with the dowager Lady Lamerton."

The captain stood still, thinking, as one frozen and fast to the spot.

"Besides," put in the woman, with a flicker of her old inordinate vanity and falsehood, in spite of her present fear,