In intervals between fits of alarm--when the carriage seemed to be about to halt--he turned these things over. He could hear the girl weeping in her corner, quietly, but in a heart-broken manner; and continually, while he thought and she wept, and an impenetrable curtain of darkness hid the one from the other, the chaise held on its course up-hill and down-hill, now bumping and rattling behind flying horses, and now rumbling and straining up Yatesbury Downs.
At last he broke the silence. 'What makes you think,' he said, 'that it is Sir George has done this?'
She did not answer or stop weeping for a while. Then, 'He was to meet me at sunset, at the Corner,' she said. 'Who else knew that I should be there? Tell me that.'
'But if he is at the bottom of this, where is he?' he hazarded. 'If he would play the villain with you--'
'He would play the thief,' she cried passionately, 'as he has played the hypocrite. Oh, it is vile! vile!'
'But--I don't understand,' Mr. Thomasson stammered; he was willing to hear all he could.
'His fortune, his lands, all he has in the world are mine!' she cried. 'Mine! And he goes this way to recover them! But I could forgive him that, ah, I could forgive him that, but I cannot forgive him--'
'His love!' she cried fiercely. 'That I will never forgive him! Never!'
He knew that she spoke, as she had wept, more freely for the darkness. He fancied that she was writhing on her seat, that she was tearing her handkerchief with her hands. 'But--it may not be he,' he said after a silence broken only by the rumble of wheels and the steady trampling of the horses.
'I say it is!' she repeated in a kind of fury of rage, shame, and impatience. 'Do you think that I who loved him, I whom he fooled to the top of my pride, judge him too harshly? I tell you if an angel from heaven had witnessed against him I would have laughed the tale to scorn. But I have seen--I have seen with my own eyes. The man who came to the door and threatened us had lost a joint of the forefinger. Yesterday I saw that man with _him_; I saw the hand that held the pistol to-day give _him_ a note yesterday. I saw _him_ read the note, and I saw him point me out to the man who bore it--that he might know to-day whom he was to seize! Oh shame! Shame on him!' And she burst into fresh weeping.