He knew absolutely nothing
against her--not even that she was the person he had seen in Mrs
Catanach's company in the garret of Lossie House. But he steeled
himself to distrust her, and held his peace.
"It is clear," she resumed after a pause, "that the intervention of
some friend of both is the only thing that can be of the smallest
use. I know you are a friend of his--a true one, and I do not
see why you should not be a friend of mine as well--Will you be
my friend too?"
She rose as she said the words, and approaching him, bent on him
out of the shadow the full strength of eyes whose light had not yet
begun to pale before the dawn we call death, and held out a white
hand glimmering in the dusk: she knew only too well the power of
a still fine woman of any age over a youth of twenty.
Malcolm, knowing nothing about it, yet felt hers, and was on his
guard. He rose also, but did not take her hand.
"I have had only too much reason," she added, "to distrust some
who, unlike you, professed themselves eager to serve me; but I know
neither Lord Lossie nor you will play me false."
She took his great rough hand between her two soft palms, and for
one moment Malcolm was tempted--not to betray his friend, but
to simulate a yielding sympathy, in order to come at the heart of
her intent, and should it prove false, to foil it the more easily.
But the honest nature of him shrunk from deception, even where the
object of it was good: he was not at liberty to use falsehood for
the discomfiture of the false even; a pretended friendship was of
the vilest of despicable things, and the more holy the end, the
less fit to be used for the compassing of it--least of all in
the cause of a true friendship.
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