"What good would that do either you or them?" he asked.
She sprang out of her chair and stood facing him.
"Don't you know what it is to hate?" she cried. "Is it only Irish blood that can boil at rank injustice? Is it only Irish hearts which burn to aid the oppressed and torture the oppressors as they tortured their poor unfortunate victims? You said you would shoot the man who struck you down, shoot him like a dog, if he were escaping your clutches. Don't you think Kitty Lambton's children have as great, if not a greater right to shoot that bloodless, heartless monster like a dog or a cat or any other vermin, if they met him on this earth? I'd tell them to do it; I'd tell them to do it if there were no other way to make his last hours more full of misery and agony. That's what I'd do, the dirty old traitorous villain that he is. Pah!"
She uttered the words with a tigerish pant as she swung on her heels and strode away to the end of the verandah, where she stood for a moment staring up at the sky, before she returned.
"It's the curse of the Irish to feel the wounds of others as keenly as though they were one's own," she said, as she sat down again. "What concern is it of mine whether the old fool hoards his money and drives lost souls to perdition? I've no right to worry about other people's troubles. Sure I have enough of my own. But it just maddened me to think of it. Oh, it's the Irish hearts that suffer!"
The harsh vibrant tones had gone; the voice he heard was that of the woman who had pleaded earlier in the evening for compassion for the men who had injured her.
Impulsively he reached out his hand and touched hers.
"You must not," he said. "You must not heed such tales. You are too warm-hearted. The sordid side of life is not for you. We who have to come in contact with it, and know it in all its wretched squalor, know only too well that rarely, if ever, can one of the high-pitched stories of personal wrong be justified. The greater the criminal, the greater the protestations of innocence and injustice. Do not be deceived. You, who are so full of sympathy and gentleness, you who would not, by your own hand, hurt the hair of a man's head, you----"
"Don't!" she cried. "Don't! You must not--never--never--I told you I would not have you speak to me of--I must not hear such things. I----"