Chapter 48 - Page 2

He sate down now. 'Wrong!' he echoed, bitterly. 'Not 'wrong? Well! I must bear it somehow. Your mother is dead. That's one comfort. It is true, then, is it? Why, I did not believe it - not I. I laughed in my sleeve at their credulity; and I was the dupe all the time!'

'Papa, I cannot tell you all. It is not my secret, or you should know it directly. Indeed, you will be sorry some time - I have never deceived you yet, have I?' trying to take one of his hands; but he kept them tightly in his pockets, his eyes fixed on the pattern of the carpet before him. 'Papa!' said she, pleading again, 'have I ever deceived you?'

'How can I tell? I hear of this from the town's talk. I don't know what next may come out!'

'The town's talk,' said Molly in dismay. 'What business is it of theirs?'

'Every one makes it their business to cast dirt on a girl's name who has disregarded the commonest rules of modesty and propriety.'

'Papa, you are very hard. "Disregarded modesty." I will tell you exactly what I have done. I met Mr Preston once, - that evening when you put me down to walk over Croston Heath, - and there was another person with him. I met him a second time - and that time by appointment - nobody but our two selves, - in the Towers' Park. That is all. Papa, you must trust me. I cannot explain more. You must trust me indeed.'

He could not help relenting at her words; there was such truth in the tone in which they were spoken. But he neither spoke nor stirred for a minute or two. Then he raised his eyes to hers for the first time since she had acknowledged the external truth of what he charged her with. Her face was very white, but it bore the impress of the final sincerity of death, when the true expression prevails without the poor disguises of time.

'The letters?' he said, - but almost as if he ere ashamed to question that countenance any further.

'I gave him one letter, - of which I did not write a word, - which, in fact, I believe to have been merely an envelope, without any writing whatever inside. The giving that letter, - the two interviews I have named, - make all the private intercourse I have had with Mr Preston. Oh! papa, what have they been saying that has grieved - shocked you so much?'

'Never mind. As the world goes, what you say you have done, Molly, is ground enough. You must tell me all. I must be able to refute these rumours point by point.'

'How are they to be refuted; when you say that the truth which I have acknowledged is ground enough for what people are saying?'

'You say you were not acting for yourself, but for another. If you tell me who the other was, - if you tell me everything out fully, I will do my utmost to screen her - for of course I guess it was Cynthia - while I am exonerating you.'

'No, papa!' said Molly, after some little consideration; 'I have told you all I can tell; all that concerns