The man she
had loved was gone to his end also, reckless and hopeless, after he had
thrown away his chance of a lifetime with Loisette Alroyd. There had been
left behind this girl, to whom tragedy had come too young, who drank
humiliation with a heart as proud as ever straightly set its course
through crooked ways.
It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a fountain of
bitterness to her soul, which welled up and flooded her life sometimes.
It had given her face no sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes.
She had been glad when Haman was condemned for murder, for she believed
he had committed it, and ten times hanging could not compensate for that
dear life gone from their sight--Lucy, the pride of her father's heart.
She was glad when Haman was condemned, because of the woman who had
stolen him from Lucy, because of that other man, her lover, gone out of
her own life. The new hardness in her rejoiced that now the woman, if she
had any heart at all, must have it bowed down by this supreme humiliation
and wrung by the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope.
And now this man before her, this man with a boy's face, with the dark
luminous eyes, whom she had saved from the frozen plains, he had that in
his breast which would free Haman, so he had said.
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