None of the triumph which had leaped out of her bruised heart,
none of the strident malice with which her voice, whether she would
or no, strove to avenge her wounded sense of property; none of that
unconscious abnegation, so very near to heroism, with which she had
rushed and caught up her baby from beneath the bayonet, when, goaded by
her malice and triumph, Hughs had rushed to seize that weapon. None of
all that, but, instead, a pitiable terror of the ordeal before her--a
pitiful, mute, quivering distress, that this man, against whom, two
hours before, she had felt such a store of bitter rancour, whose almost
murderous assault she had so narrowly escaped, should now be in this
plight.
The sight of her emotion penetrated through his spectacles to something
lying deep in the old butler.
"Don't you take on," he said; "I'll stand by yer. He shan't treat yer
with impuniness."
To his uncomplicated nature the affair was still one of tit for tat.
Mrs. Hughs became mute again. Her torn heart yearned to cancel the
penalty that would fall on all of them, to deliver Hughs from the common
enemy--the Law; but a queer feeling of pride and bewilderment, and
a knowledge, that, to demand an eye for an eye was expected of all
self-respecting persons, kept her silent.
Thus, then, they reached the great consoler, the grey resolver of
all human tangles, haven of men and angels, the police court.
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