‘You cannot blind me with your falsehoods,’ she said. ‘I know that Mr. Ezekiel Babb was robbed by his own son. I know the prison suit was yours. You confessed it when I showed it you on your return to consciousness: perhaps before you were aware how seriously you committed yourself. I know that you were in jail at Prince’s Town, and that you escaped.’ ‘Well, Miss Jordan, what you say is partly true, and partly incorrect.’ ‘Are you not Mr. Babb’s son?’ she asked imperiously. He bowed; he was courtly in manner. ‘Was not his son found guilty of robbing him?’ He bowed again. ‘Was he not imprisoned for so doing?’ ‘He was so.’ ‘Did he not escape from prison?’ ‘He did.’ ‘And yet,’ exclaimed Barbara angrily, ‘you dare to say with one breath that you are innocent, whilst with the next you confess your guilt! Like the satyr in the fable, I would drive you from my presence, you blower of true and false!’ He caught her hands again and held her firmly, whilst he drew her out of the shadow of the archway into the moonlight of the court. ‘Do you give it up?’ he asked; and, by the moon, the sickle moon, on his pale face, she saw him smile. By that same moon he saw the frown on her brow. ‘Miss Barbara, I am not Ezekiel Babb’s _only_ son!’ Her heart stood still; then the blood rushed through her veins like the tidal bore in the Severn. The whole of the sky seemed full of daylight. She saw all now clearly. Her pride, her anger fell from her as the chains fell from Peter when the angel touched him. ‘No, Miss Jordan, I am guiltless in this matter—guiltless in everything except in having deceived you.’ ‘God forgive you!’ she said in a low tone as her eyes fell and tears rushed to them. She did not draw her hands from his. She was too much dazed to know that he held them. ‘God forgive you!—you have made me suffer very much!’ She did not see how his large earnest eyes were fixed upon her, how he was struggling with his own heart to refrain from speaking out what he felt; but had she met his eye then in the moonlight, there would have been no need of words, only a quiver of the lips, and they would have been clasped in each other’s arms. She did not look up; she was studying, through a veil of tears, some white stones that caught the moonlight. ‘This is not the time for me to tell you the whole sad tale,’ he went on. ‘I have acted as I thought my duty pointed out—my duty to a brother.’ ‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘you have a brother—that strange boy.’ A laugh, jeering and shrill, close in their ears. From behind the great yew appeared the shoulders and face of the impish Walter. ‘Oh, the pious, the proper Jasper! Oh, ho, ho! What frail men these saints are who read their Bibles to weak-eyed Leahs and blooming Rachels, and make love to both! He pointed jeeringly at them with his long fingers.