"These are wild vows, Elinor, and will be repented when thou dost consider them. I would be well-nigh as glad as thou to see Christopher Neville acquitted of the charge of this terrible crime. To say truth, against all the evidence, against reason itself, I cherished faint hope that something might be unearthed even yet to show us that we had all been mistaken, but now that he hath skulked away under cover of darkness--why, 'tis the same as a confession."
"Ay, and for that reason he has never done it. Never--_never_--_never_! 'Tis not in his nature, not near so much as to have done the murder of which he stands accused. Giles, 'tis but a little while since thou didst urge my taking Christopher Neville for my tenant yonder at Cecil Manor; and why? Because, thou saidst, he was the boldest and the truest and the faithfullest man in Maryland. So he was and is. Thinkst thou a man's soul is changed in a day or two days or a week? Fie! thou hast not enough knowledge of human nature to be ruler of a county, much less a commonwealth."
Brent drew his brows together impatiently.
"'Tis all very well to rail like that, but it proves nothing. He is gone. That is a fact not to be gainsaid. What is it, then, but jail-breaking?"
"Ay, but he may not have gone of his free will."
"A likely story. Who, then, hath taken him by force?"
"How do I know? Some that have reason to profit by his accusation, yet fear to press the trial to the end. Perchance the fathers of St. Inigo's."
Giles Brent was furious, all the more that the same possibility had been floating dimly in his own mind. He answered coldly,--
"Since thou art so lost to all sense of dignity and decency in the cause of thy lover as to accuse Holy Church herself rather than admit what one who runs may read, that he hath done a dastardly deed and then hath run away to escape the consequences, why, I will waste neither argument nor entreaty, but when the day comes that all is made clear, thou wilt have a heavy account to settle."
"I know not how it may be in the future of this world, Giles; but when the day comes that the secrets of all hearts are laid open, I feel sure as that I stand here that Christopher Neville will have naught to fear. For myself my shame will be that I loved not too much, but too little. To love cautiously is not to love at all. For thee, thy punishment--the hardest, I believe, for a just man--shall be to see too late the wrong thou hast done; the friendship lightest held where it should have been strongest, the faith withheld where the hand should have been outstretched in aid, the life sacrificed that should have been a bulwark to the state,--all this will be laid at thy door--"