Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/644

622 Steven laughed; not a pleasant laugh to listen to. "I can promise you that easily enough, sir," he answered. "I've wasted too much time already on them both, and for the future shall have work enough to employ me without running after fine gentlemen or their companions. If ever—a year hence, or ten or twenty—Mr. Clarendon Whyte's evil chance should bring him across my path, I'd be apt to treat him, by the Lord, as I treated a snake that got coiled about my body once while I slept—take him by the throat and knock what brains he has out on the nearest stone that came to hand! 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' is what is written; I know of nothing wiser or juster to supersede that law."

The Squire stood for full two minutes nervously crushing the brim of his hat out of shape between his hands—two minutes, in which many wild, revolutionary possibilities flashed before his mind, among others, that a working farmer, whose honor has been betrayed, may feel very much as a country gentleman would do under the same circumstances. "Lawrence," he said at length, holding out his hand, "I don't see that you and I should not part friends, or that what has happened need make any difference between us. Will you shake hands?"

"Aye, indeed," said Steven, quite with his accustomed respect, "that I will, and thank you kindly for coming to break this to me yourself. As to making no difference, I can't agree with you, sir; I can go to your house no more, and it doesn't seem to me any member of your family could wish to enter mine."

This, then, was their parting; these were the tidings that the Squire had to bear back to those who were waiting for him so eagerly at the Dene. On learning Steven's resolve, Katharine fired with indignation; called him cruel, ungenerous, narrow of judgment, then burst into tears, and knew that in her heart she had never more respected him, more sympathized with him, than at this moment. Dora, after listening calmly to all her uncle had to tell, remarked that, as far as she could see, everything had happened for the best. It would be a heavy tax, doubtless, for her relations, this having to receive her back. For herself, she would much sooner live on bread and water and in one room at the Dene than return to Ashcot. And now another scene, scarcely less dreaded than the first, lay before the Squire: the breaking to Mrs. Hilliard under what circumstances Theodosia's child had come home, and for what period.

Oh, the length, the interminable length of this first day on which Dora returned into the path of right! Mrs. Hilliard, who had not yet risen, buried her face in her pillow as soon as she heard the news, with the solemn assurance that she should never lift it up again. The blinds were drawn down, by her orders, all over the house. "Have we not met with dishonor, a calamity worse than death?" she said. The poor little Squire crept up and down stairs in his slippers, not exactly hard in his heart against Dora, but extremely doubtful as to Katharine's wisdom in having brought her back—upset to the last degree by the quantity of thinking he had had to go through since yesterday—ashamed of himself, as dinner-time came, for feeling his usual appetite; ashamed to look his own old servants in the face. The servants, for their part, if they did not know, suspected the worst, and already talked in whispers about the opinions they had held of Miss Dora at the best of times. Katharine sat all day at her mother's side, holding her hand, and vainly trying to find soft responses to the invalid's pitiless invectives against the culprit. Dora herself, the least-concerned person in the household, passed the time in sleep. What was there to keep awake for, now that she had learned Steven's decision? If she thought forever, she would never be able to decide whether the boxes that had gone on to Brest would be