Arminell involuntarily shrank from the woman.
"Ah! I frighten you. But the blame does not attach to me. Why were there not a few inches more lime created when the quarry was ordained? Providence means, I am told, fore-seeing. When the world was made I reckon it was foreseen that for lack of a little more lime my father would shoot himself, and the shock kill my mother, and cast me without parents on the hands of a hard uncle, who treated me so bad that I was forced to set his thatch in a blaze, and so was sent to prison. Providence saw all that in the far-off, and held hands and did not lay another handful of lime."
"Have you ever been married?" asked Arminell, startled by the defiance, the rage and revolt in the woman's heart. She asked the question without consideration, in the hope of diverting the thoughts of Mrs. Kite into another channel.
Patience was silent for a moment, and looked loweringly at the young lady, then answered abruptly, "No—a few inches of lime short stopped that."
"How did that prevent your marriage? The quarry was stopped before you were born."
"Right, and because stopped, my father was shot and I became an orphan, and was took by my uncle, and fired his house, and was sent to gaol. After that no man cared to take to wife a woman who put lighted sticks among the thatch. No respectable man would share his name with one who had been in prison. But I was a handsome girl in my day—and—but there—I will tell you no more. The stopping of the quarry did it. If there had been laid at bottom a few inches more of lime rock, it would never have happened. Where lies the blame?"
"Another quarry was opened," said Arminell, "that where Mr. Tubb is captain."
"True," answered Patience; "but between the closing
