“You whisperer!” Honora said in her ringing voice, “you liar and slabbering coward! It's necessary to cut the truth out of you. When you talk again about Mr. Burrage and the man he shot in California don't leave out the smallest detail of his exoneration. Say that he had been robbed, the other broke one of the first laws of miners and should have been killed. You'd not have done it--a knife in the back would be your thought--but a man would!” She flung the whip down on the bricks. Thomas Gast pressed his hands to his face, and slow red stains widened through his fingers. The apothecary stood transfixed; his brother was shaking in a febrile and congested horror. The woman turned disdainfully, moving to the carriage; the coachman descended and offered his arm as she mounted to the seat. The reins were drawn and the horses started forward in a walk. Honora's gaze was set, looking directly ahead; her hands, in her lap of flowered muslin, were now relaxed; they gave an impression of crushing weariness. Jason's heart pounded like a forge hammer; a tremendous realization was forced into his brain--he need never again question why Honora had married him; his doubts were answered, stopped, for ever. He turned to her to speak an insignificant part of his measureless gratitude, but he was choked, blinded, by a passion of honor and homage. Her gaze sought him, and there was a faint tremor of her lips; it grew into the shadow of an ironic smile. Suddenly it was borne upon his new, acquiescent serenity that Honora would always be a Canderay for him, he must perpetually think of her in the terms of his early habit; she would eternally be a little beyond him, a being to approach, to attend, with ceremony. The memory and sweep of all California, the pageant of life he had seen on the way, his own boasted success and importance, faded before the solid fact of Honora's commanding heritage in life, in Cottarsport. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dark Fleece, by Joseph Hergesheimer