They spoke as if she had planned it purposely to vex her father
and his bride in their honeymoon and deprive them of their lawful
pleasure; but Josephine never blamed her as they did, and when they were
most bitter cast in her little words of soothing and excused her with
more zeal than evidence--excused her sometimes to the point of making
her sisters angry with her and inclined to accuse her of her old
failing, meek-spiritedness carried to the verge of self-abasement.
But the one who suffered most of all those left to lament or to wonder
was poor Alick Corfield. It was a misery to see him with his hollow
cheeks and haggard eyes, like an animal that has been hunted into lone
places, terrified and looking for a way of escape, or like a dog that
has lost its master. He tried every method known to him to gain
information of her directly or indirectly, but Mr. Dundas, ignorant
himself, had only to guard that ignorance from breaking out. As for
knowledge, he could not give what he did not possess, and the terrible
thing that he did know he was not likely to let appear.
One day when the poor fellow broke down, as was not unusual with him
when asking about Leam--and Mr. Dundas read him like a book, all save
that one black page where the beloved name stood inscribed in letters of
his own heart's blood between the words "crime" and "murder"--with a
woman's liking for saying pleasant things which soothed those who heard
them, and did no hurt to those who said them save for the insignificant
manner in which falsehood hurts the soul, Sebastian, laying his hand
kindly on the poor fellow's angular shoulder, said, "I am sorry to know
as much as I do, Alick.
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