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Page 78
"Are you ill?" she said, in an indignant voice which had, in spite of
herself, soft cadences.
"No, Clemency."
"Then why do you look so?" she demanded.
James turned at that. "Clemency, you accuse me of cruelty," he said,
"but you yourself are cruel. You do not realize that you cannot tell a
man he is a murderer, and throw him over when he loves you, and yet have
him utterly unmoved by it."
Suddenly Clemency was in his arms. "I love you, I love you," she sobbed.
"Don't be unhappy, don't look so. It breaks my heart. I love you, I do
love you, dear. I can't marry you, but I love you!"
"If you love me, you can marry me."
Clemency shrank away, then she clung to him again. "No," she said, "I
can't get over the thought of it. I can't help it, but I do love you. We
will go on just the same as ever, only we will not get married. You know
we were not going to get married just yet anyway. I love you. We will go
on just the same. Only don't look the way you did this morning at
breakfast."
"How did I look?"
"As if your heart were broken."
"So it is, dear."
"No, it is not. I love you, I tell you. What is the need of bothering
about marriage anyway? I am perfectly happy being engaged. Annie says
she is never going to get married. Let the marriage alone. Only you
won't look so any more, will you, dear?"
CHAPTER XVI
After this James encountered a strange state of things: the semblance of
happiness, which almost deceived him as to its reality.
Clemency was as loving as she had ever been. Gordon congratulated James
upon the reconciliation. "I knew the child could never hold out, and it
was Annie Lipton," he said. James admitted that Annie Lipton might have
been the straw which turned the balance. He knew that Clemency had not
told Gordon of her conviction that he had given the final dose of
morphine to her aunt. Everything now went on as before. Clemency
suddenly became awake to Emma's petty persecutions of James, and they
ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between
the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He
heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev
him?" said Emma in her strident voice.
"No, I am not," returned Clemency's sweet, decided one.
"What be you goin' with him again for then?"
James knew how the girl blushed at that, but she answered with spirit.
"That is entirely my own affair, Emma," she said, "and as long as Doctor
Elliot remains under this roof, and pays for it, too, he must be treated
decently. You don't pass him things, you don't fill his lamp. Now you
must treat him exactly as you did before, or I shall tell Uncle Tom."
"You won't tell him why?" said Emma, and there was alarm in her voice,
for she adored Gordon.
"Did you ever know me to go from one to another in such a way?" asked
Clemency. "You know if I told Uncle Tom, he would not put up with it a
minute. He thinks the world of Doctor Elliot."
"It's awful queer how men folks can be imposed on," said Emma.
"That has nothing to do with it," Clemency said. "You must treat Doctor
Elliot respectfully, Emma."
"I'm jest as good as he be," said Emma resentfully.
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