Part 32 (1/2)
”Spare you?” he echoed ”What shall I spare you?”
”The shame of it all; the shame that is ever mine in the reflection that for a season I believed I loved you”
He smiled ”If you can still feel shame, it shall overwhelm you ere I have done For you shall hear me out Here there are none to interrupt us, none to thwart n will Reflect then, and ree you had wrought in me Your vanity welcomed that flattery, that tribute to the power of your beauty
Yet, all in a rounds, you believed rounds?” she cried, protesting almost despite herself
”So paltry that the justices at Truro would not ainst me”
”Because,” she cut in, ”they accounted that you had been sufficiently provoked Because you had not sworn to them as you swore to me that no provocation should ever drive you to raise your hand against my brother
Because they did not realize how false and how forsworn you were”
He considered her aever by the rose-tree was alive th ”I need it For I desire you to understand ht I mean you to see how just is my resentment; how just the punishment that is to overtake you for what you have made of my life and perhaps of my hereafter Justice Baine and another who is dead, knew me for innocent”
”They knew you for innocent?” There was scornful amazement in her tone
”Were they not witnesses of the quarrel betwixt you and Peter and of your oath that you would kill hier Afterwards I bethought me that he was your brother”
”Afterwards?” said she ”After you had ain,” Oliver replied calain that you lie”
He considered her for a long hed ”Have you ever,”
he asked, ”known a man to lie without some purpose? Men lie for the sake of profit, they lie out of cowardice or ar boasters I know of no other causes that will drive a man to falsehood, save that--ah, yes!--” (and he flashed a sidelong glance at Lionel)--”save that sometimes a man will lie to shi+eld another, out of self-sacrifice There you have all the spurs that urge a ht? Reflect!
Ask yourself what purpose I could serve by lying to you now Consider further that I have coht so much as to punish you for that and for all its bitter consequences to ht you hither to exact pay What end then can I serve by falsehood?”
”All this being so, what end could you serve by truth?” she countered
”To make you realize to the full the injustice that you did To s for which you are called to pay To prevent you fro yourself a martyr; to make you perceive in all its deadly bitterness that what now comes to you is the inevitable fruit of your own faithlessness”
”Sir Oliver, do you think me a fool?” she asked him
”Madam, I do--and worse,” he answered
”Ay, that is clear,” she agreed scornfully, ”since even now you waste breath in atteainst h you talk froment no word of yours can efface those bloodstains in the snow that formed a trail from that poor uish the memory of the hatred between him and you, and of your own threat to kill him; nor can it stifle the recollection of the public voice de your punish with me? You dare here under Heaven to stand and lie to loze to the villainy of your present deed--for that is the purpose of your falsehood, since you asked ainst all that, to convince me that your hands were clean, to induce hted to you?”
”My word,” he answered her in a ringing voice
”Your lie,” she amended