so that you spare her further shame and sorrow.”

“Your talking in this fashion to me, Sarah, is very like Satan correcting sin. I loved Aspatria when I met you in Rome.”

“Of course! Adam always has his Eve ready. ‘Not my fault, good people! Look at this woman! With her bright smiles and her soft tongue she beguiled me; and so I fell!’ We can settle that question, you and I, again. Now you must ring the bell, and order your horse—say, at four o’clock to-morrow morning. You can have nearly six hours’ sleep,—quite enough for you.”

“You have not convinced me, Sarah.”

“Then you must ride now, and be convinced afterward. For your sister’s sake 170 and for Aspatria’s sake, you will surely go away.”

170

Lady Redware was crying, and she cried a little harder to emphasize Sarah’s pleading. Ulfar was in a hard strait. He looked angrily at the handsome little woman urging him to do the thing he hated to do, and then taking the kerchief from his sister’s face, he kissed her, and promised to leave Redware at dawn of day.

“But,” said he, “if you send me away now, I tell you, our parting is likely to be for many years, perhaps for life. I am going beyond civilization, and so beyond scandal.”

“Do not flatter yourself so extravagantly, Ulfar. There is scandal everywhere, and always has been, even from the beginning. I have no doubt those nameless little sisters of Cain and Abel were talked about unpleasantly by their sisters and brothers-in-law. In fact, wherever there are women there are men glad to pull them down to their own level.”

171

“Is it not very hard, then, that I am not to be permitted to stay here and defend the women I love?”

Sarah shook her head. “It is beyond your power, Ulfar. If Porthos were on earth again, or Amadis of Gaul, they might have happy and useful careers in handling as they deserve the maligners of good, quiet women. But the men of this era!—which of them durst lift the stone that the hand without sin is permitted to cast?”

So they talked the night away, drifting gradually from the unpleasant initial subject to Ulfar’s plan of travel and 172 the far-off prospect of his return. And in the gray, cold dawn he bade them farewell, and they watched him until he vanished in the mists 

 Prev. P 64/92 next