But Mary was not to be intimidated, and Sir Robert, perceiving he could gain nothing from her in this way, arose, and approaching the baroness, who had been looking on with much interest, said, softly, "My Lady de Boteler, I wish to put a question or two to this woman, but as what I shall ask must be distressing to you, perhaps you had better retire."
"But what has he to do with the Essex men or the bondmen?" asked the galleyman."How's the Lewin c?ase gitting on?" someone would ask at the Cocks, and Reuben would answer:
ONE:"Could you paint Boarzell?""Wished my farm wur in hell, dud he? He cursed my farm, dud he? The young whelp!"
ONE:"My lord," said Edith, in her defence, "this woman has sworn falsely. The medicine I gave was a sovereign remedy, if given as I ordered. Ten drops would have saved the child's life; but the contents of the phial destroyed it. The words I uttered were prayers for the life of the child. My children, and all who know me, can bear witness that I have a custom of asking His blessing upon all I take in hand. I raised my eyes towards heaven, and muttered words; but, my lord, they were words of prayerand I looked up as I prayed, to the footstool of the Lord. But it is in vain to contend: the malice of the wicked will triumph, and Edith Holgrave, who even in thought never harmed one of God's creatures, must be sacrificed to cover the guilt, or hide the thoughtlessness of another."
TWO:There, at the post, quivering with a pain he scarcely felt, Reuben swore that he would tame and conquer Boarzell. The rage, the fight, the degradation, the hatred of the last twelve hours should not be in vain. In some way, as yet unplanned, Boarzell should one day be hisnot only the fifty acres the commissioners had tweaked from his father, but the whole of it, even that mocking, nodding crest of firs. He would subdue it; it should bear grain as meekly as the most fruitful field; it should feed fat cattle; it should make the name of Odiam great, the greatest in Sussex. It should be his, and the world should wonder.
TWO:"I can. I've got near a hundred acres sown already" ... and then all the floodgates that had been shut for so long were burst, and the tides of his confidence rolled out to her, moaningall the ache of his ambition which nobody would share."It is of no consequence who I am: and as to this mask, why! a man can work as well with it as without it."
