"
"Not to her, but to poor Primrose Lear. 'Tes the riband that tied up
your wreath. She's robbed the dead. Loveday Strick's robbed the dead."
Then indeed, after a moment's stupefaction following on the horrid
revelation, a murmur of indignation ran from mouth to mouth.
"She's robbed the dead!"
"My soul! To rob the living's stealing, but to rob the dead's a profane
thing."
"'Tisn't man as can judge her, 'tis only God Almighty!" cried an old
minister, aghast.
"Look at the maid, how she stands.... Her own conscience judges her,
I should say!"
"She's no word to excuse herself, simmingly."
"That's because she do know nothing can excuse what she's done...."
And, indeed, Loveday stood without speech. Perhaps in all that buzz of
murmuring she heard the voice of her own conscience at last, for she
made no effort to defend herself, or, perhaps, even at that hour, she
heard nothing but the dread whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora
Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall,
fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of
noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable
position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at
brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken
tendrils after rain upon her heavily hanging skirts.
All she was heard to murmur, and that very low, was a halting sentence
about her white sash: "But you said--you said you'd dance with me if
I got my sash .
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