Woodgate had
more work to restrain, now her tears for Rachel, and now her consuming
indignation with the absentees.
"Your wife feels it as much as mine," said Steel to the vicar, when the
gentlemen were alone at last; and one of them could have struck him for
the speech, one who had insight and could feel himself.
"I wouldn't go so far as that," the good vicar rejoined. "But Morna
feels it dreadfully. Dreadfully she feels it!"
"I almost wish we had kept the table as it was," pursued Steel over his
cigar, "and had one of those flash-light photographs taken, as they do
at all the twopenny banquets nowadays. All that was left of them--left
of six-and-twenty!"
His flippant tone made Langholm writhe, and drove him into the
conversation to change its tenor. He asked by whom the evil had come.
"Surely not the judge?"
"No," said Steel, with emphasis. "Not that I have it for a fact, but I
would put a thousand pounds upon his charity and his discretion in such
a matter. A kinder and a sounder man does not exist, though I say it who
never met him in my life. But I heard every word of my wife's trial, and
I know the way the judge took the case.
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