You'll have to
find words. Oh you'll know. And then the sight of you, alone, would
soothe--"
"He's the gentlest of men," she interrupted again.
Anthony shook his head. "It would take no end of generosity, no end of
gentleness to forgive such a dead set. For my part I would have liked
better to have been killed and done with at once. It could not have been
worse for you--and I suppose it was of you that he was thinking most
while those infernal lawyers were badgering him in court. Of you. And
now I think of it perhaps the sight of you may bring it all back to him.
All these years, all these years--and you his child left alone in the
world. I would have gone crazy. For even if he had done wrong--"
"But he hasn't," insisted Flora de Barral with a quite unexpected
fierceness. "You mustn't even suppose it. Haven't you read the accounts
of the trial?"
"I am not supposing anything," Anthony defended himself. He just
remembered hearing of the trial. He assured her that he was away from
England, the second voyage of the _Ferndale_. He was crossing the
Pacific from Australia at the time and didn't see any papers for weeks
and weeks.
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