"How came it there?" said Nina, almost screaming in her agony.
"That I know not; but Souchey is not a liar; nor were your aunt and her
servant liars in telling me that I should find it in your hands."
"Anton," she said, "as the Lord made me, I knew not of it;" and she
fell on her knees before his feet.
He looked down upon her, scanning every feature of her face and every
gesture of her body with hard inquiring eyes. He did not stoop to raise
her, nor, at the moment, did he say a word to comfort her. "And you
think that I stole it and put it there?" she said. She did not quail
before his eyes, but seemed, though kneeling before him, to look up
at him as though she would defy him. When first she had sunk upon the
ground, she had been weak, and wanted pardon though she was ignorant
of all offence; but his hardness, as he stood with his eyes fixed upon
her, had hardened her, and all her intellect, though not her heart,
was in revolt against him. "You think that I have robbed you?"
"I do not know what to think," he said.
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