But this note proved the wrong one. Marien instantly took higher ground.
"I know that woman," she replied. "I have sensed her spirit. You do her injustice. If she knew the facts, she would speak, though it killed her and ruined her son, rather than see you endure for a single day what you are suffering now."
Hampstead knew better than the speaker how true this was.
"But there is another reason, a higher reason," he began slowly, with a grave significance that caught Marien's attention instantly, "the soul of Rollie Burbeck!"
The minister had breathed rather than spoken these last words. They had in them a sense of the awe he felt at what hung upon his actions now.
For an instant, the keen eyes of the woman searched the depths of Hampstead's own, as if she was making sure that what she heard and understood with this new and spiritual intuition which had come so swiftly out of her experience, was confirmed by what she saw.
"You mean," she asked, only half credulous, "that you will suffer for his sake as you have suffered for mine, until new character begins to grow in him just as a new objective begins to stir in me? You mean that?"
Hampstead nodded. "That is my hope," he said solemnly.
"Oh!" Marien sighed, with a prolonged aspirate note which expressed reverence, awe, and astonishment. "But the charges? They will be pressed. You will be held—convicted—imprisoned!"
"I cannot think it," argued John soberly. "A way will appear to avoid that. Yet we must contemplate the worst. One thing is sure," and his voice appeared to increase in volume without an increase of tone, "one
