Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was off his tongue already. "Go," said Babbie coldly, "and shout and stamp through the house; you may succeed in frightening the women, who are the only persons in it." "Where is he?" "He has gone to the Spittal to see you." "He knew I was on the hill." "He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had run away with me in your trap." "Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give you back to him." "To compel you," corrected Babbie. "Pooh!" said the earl nervously, "that was but mummery on the hill." "It was a marriage." "With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would count for less than nothing. Babbie, I am still in time to save you." "I don't want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses no court could discredit." "What witnesses?" "Mr. McKenzie and yourself." She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked at him, there were tears in his eyes as well as in her own. It was perhaps the first time these two had, ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for Rintoul. "I am so sorry," Babbie began in a broken voice; then stopped, because they seemed such feeble words. "If you are sorry," the earl answered eagerly, "it is not yet too late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come away with me, Babbie, if only in pity for yourself." "Ah, but I don't pity myself." "Because this man has blinded you." "No, he has made me see." "This mummery on the hill--" "Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of that marriage, as He could never have countenanced yours and mine." "God! I never heard the word on your lips before." "I know that." "It is his teaching, doubtless?" "Yes." "And he told you that to do to me as you have done was to be pleasing in God's sight?" "No; he knows that it was so evil in God's sight that I shall suffer for it always." "But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment for him?" "It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment will be worse, probably, than mine." "That," said the earl, scoffing, "is not just." "It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying me." "And what form is his punishment to take?" "For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in all men's eyes, unless--unless God is more merciful to us than we can expect." Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it with sarcasm. "It is you I pity now," he said, looking wonderingly at her. "Do you not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to take you from me?" "If you knew him," Babbie answered, "you would not need to be told that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an hour ago." "And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off to marry him."