"I have already said that I had nothing whatever to do with the matter," he answered.
"You had no right to come to me with such a message. It puts me in the position of waiting for her death! Oh, it's an insult! It's an insult to me and to Cousin Anna! What will she think?"
"She will think nothing," he said, roused by a sense of her injustice, "because she will never know."
"Because if it is cruel for me to say a thing which harms nobody except me for bringing the message, it would be a thousand times more cruel for you to tell your cousin that her death was counted on."
He rose as he spoke, and stood looking down on her with the full purpose of constraining her to his will. She sprang up in her turn.
"Very well; I will not tell her. You may say to Father Frontford from me that it will be time enough for him to undertake the disposal of my property when it is mine. I thank him for his officiousness!"
"You are unjust to Father Frontford. I have made his wish seem offensive by the way I have put it, I suppose. At any rate, he is simply seeking the good of the church."
"He would vote to-morrow for any man that he thought would do better than he can do. He would support Mr. Strathmore himself if he believed it well for the church. I do not find myself in sympathy with everything that he does, but I know him, and of one thing I am sure: he would be burned alive in slow fires to advance the good of the church."
She looked at him curiously. Then she turned away in seeming carelessness, and began to arrange some pink roses which stood in a big vase on a table near at hand.
"Good-by," he said. "I am sorry to have offended you."
"Must you go?" responded she with a society manner which cut him to the quick. "Let me give you a rose."
She broke one off, and handed it to him. He took it awkwardly, wholly at a loss to understand her.
"They are lovely, aren't they?" she said. "Mr. Stanford sent them to me this morning."
He looked at her until her eyes fell. Then he laid the rose on the table near the hand which had given it to him, and without further speech went out.
FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL, AND EVER Richard II., ii. 2.
Although Ashe had said that he should not go again to the poverty-stricken dwelling of Mrs. Murphy, he found himself a few days later beside her bed. Word had been brought to him that she was dying, and that she begged to see him before her death. There was no resisting a call like this, and on a gloomy afternoon he had gone down to the dingy court, torn by memories and worn with inward struggles.