Chippinge Borough

But he did not know Mary yet, either in her strength or her weakness. Nor did he consider that her father was already more than a name to her. She hung a moment undecided and wretched, drooping as the white rose that hangs its head in the first shower. Then she turned to the elder man, and throwing her arms about his neck hung in tears on his breast. "You will be good to him, sir," she whispered passionately. "Oh, forgive him! Forgive him, sir!"

"My dear-"

"Oh, forgive him, sir!"

Sir Robert smoothed her hair with a caressing hand, and with pinched lips and bright eyes looked at his adversary over her head. "I would forgive him," he said, "I could forgive him-all but this! All but this, my dear! I could forgive him had he not tricked you and deceived you, cozened you and flattered you-into this! Into the belief that he loves you, while he loves only your inheritance! Or that part," he added bitterly, "of which he has not already robbed you!"

"Sir Robert," Vaughan said, "you have stooped very low. But it will not avail you."

"It has availed me so far," the baronet retorted. With confidence he was regaining also command of himself.

Vaughan winced. In proportion as the other recovered his temper, he lost his.

"It will avail me still farther," Sir Robert continued exultantly, "when my daughter understands, as she shall understand, sir, that when you came here to-day, when you stole a march on me, as you thought, and proposed marriage to her behind my back, you knew all that I knew! Knew, sir, that she was my daughter, knew that she was my heiress, knew that she ousted you, knew that by a marriage with her, and by that only, you could regain all that you had lost!"

"It is a lie!" Vaughan cried, stung beyond endurance. He was pale with anger.

"Then refute it!" Sir Robert said, clasping the girl, who had involuntarily winced at the word, more closely to him. "Refute it, sir! Refute it!"

"It is absurd! It-it needs no refutation!" Vaughan cried.

"Why?" Sir Robert retorted. "I state it. I am prepared to prove it! I have three witnesses to the fact!"

"To the fact that I-"

"That you knew," Sir Robert replied. "Knew this lady to be my daughter when you came here this morning-as well as I knew it myself."

Vaughan returned his look in speechless indignation. Did the man really believe in a charge, which at first had seemed to be mere vulgar abuse. It was not possible! "Sir Robert," he said, speaking slowly and with dignity, "I never did you harm by word or deed until a day or two ago. And then, God knows, perforce and reluctantly. How then can you lower yourself to-to such a charge as this?"

"Do you deny then," the baronet replied with contemptuous force, "do you dare to deny-to my face, that you knew?"

Vaughan stared. "You will say presently," he replied, "that I knew her to be your daughter when I made her acquaintance on the coach a week ago. At a time when you knew nothing yourself."

"As to that I cannot say one way or the other," Sir Robert rejoined. "I do not know how nor where you made her acquaintance. But I do know that an acquaintance so convenient, so coincident, could hardly be the work of chance!"

"Good G-d! Then you will say also that I knew who she was when I called on her the day after, and again two days after that-while you were still in ignorance?"

"I have said," the baronet answered with cold decision, "that I do not know how you made, nor why you followed up your acquaintance with her. But I have, I cannot but have my suspicions."

"Suspicions? Suspicions?" Vaughan cried bitterly. "And on suspicion, the base issue of prejudice and dislike-"

"No, sir, no!" Sir Robert struck in. "Though it may be that if I knew who introduced you to her, who opened this house to you, and the rest, I might find ground for more than suspicion! The schoolmistress might tell me somewhat, and-you wince, sir! Ay," he continued in a tone of triumph. "I see there is something to be learned! But it is not upon suspicion that I charge you to-day! It is upon the best of grounds. Did you not before my eyes and in the presence of two other witnesses, read, no farther back than the day before yesterday, in the drawing-room of my house, the whole story of my daughter's movements up to her departure from London for Bristol! With the name of the school to which she was consigned? Did you not, sir? Did you not?"

"Never! Never!"

"What?" The astonishment in Sir Robert's voice was so real, so unfeigned, that it must have carried conviction to any listener.

Vaughan passed his hand across his brow; and Mary, who had hitherto kept her face hidden, shivering under the stroke of each harsh word-for to a tender heart what could be more distressing than this strife between the two beings she most cherished? – raised her head imperceptibly. What would he answer? Only she knew how her heart beat; how sick she was with fear; how she shrank from that which the next minute might unfold!

And yet she listened.

"I-I remember now," Vaughan said-and the consternation he felt made itself heard in his voice. "I remember that I looked at a paper-"

"At a paper!" Sir Robert cried in a tone of withering contempt. "At a detailed account, sir, of my daughter's movements down to her arrival at Bristol! Do you deny that?" he continued grimly. "Do you deny that you perused that account?"

Vaughan stood for a moment with his hand pressed to his brow. He hesitated. "I remember taking a paper in my hands," he said slowly, his face flushing, as the probable inference from his words occurred to him. "But I was thinking so much of the disclosure you had made to me, and of the change it involved-to me, that-"

"That you took no interest in the written details!" Sir Robert cried in a tone of bitter irony.

"I did not."

"You did not read a word, I suppose?"

"I did not."

Before the baronet could utter the sneer which was on his lips, Mary interposed. "I-I would like to go," she murmured. "I feel rather faint!"

She detached herself from her father's arm as she spoke, and with her face averted from her lover, she moved uncertainly towards the door. She had no wish to look on him. She shrank from meeting his shamed eyes. But something, either the feeling that she would never see him again, and that this was the end of her maiden love, or the desperate hope that even at this last moment he might explain his admission-and those facts, "confirmation strong as hell" which she knew, but which Sir Robert did not know-one or other of these feelings made her falter on the threshold, made her turn. Their eyes met.

He stepped forward impulsively. He was white with pain, his face rigid. For what pain is stronger than the pang of innocence accused?

"One moment!" he said, in an unsteady voice. "If we part so, Mary, we part indeed! We part forever! I said awhile ago that you must choose between us. And you have chosen-it seems," he continued unsteadily. "Yet think! Give yourself, give me a chance. Will you not believe my word?" And he held out his arms to her. "Will you not believe that when I came to you this morning I thought you penniless? I thought you the unknown schoolmistress you thought yourself a week ago! Will you not trust me when I say that I never connected you with the missing daughter? Never dreamed of a connection? Why should I?" he added, in growing agitation as the words of his appeal wrought on himself. "Why should I? Or why do you in a moment think me guilty of the meanest, the most despicable, the most mercenary of acts?"

He was going to take her hand, but Sir Robert stepped between them, grim as fate and as vindictive. "No!" he said. "No! No more! You have given her pain enough, sir! Take your dismissal and go! She has chosen-you have said it yourself!"

He cast one look at Sir Robert, and then, "Mary," he asked, "am I to go?"

She was leaning, almost beside herself, against the door. And oh, how much of joy and sorrow she had known since she crossed the threshold. A man's embrace, and a man's treachery. The sweetness of love and the bitterness of-reality!

"Mary!" Vaughan repeated.

But the baronet could not endure this. "By G-d, no!" he cried, infuriated by the other's persistence, and perhaps a little by fear that the girl would give way. "You shall not soil her name with your lips, sir! You shall torture her no longer! You have your dismissal! Take it and go!"

"When she tells me with her own lips to go," Vaughan answered doggedly, "I will go. Not before!" For never had she seemed more desirable to him. Never, though contempt of her weakness wrestled with his love, had he wanted her more. Except that seat in the House which had cost him so dearly, she was all he had left. And it did not seem possible that she whom he had held so lately in his arms, she who had confessed her love for him, with whom he had vowed to share his life and his success, his lot good or bad-it did not seem possible that she could really believe this miserable, this incredible, this impossible thing of him! She could not! Or, if she could, he was indeed mistaken in her. "I shall go," he repeated coldly, "and I shall not return."

And Mary had not believed it of him, had she known him longer or better; had she known him as girls commonly know their lovers. But his wooing had been short, we know: and we know, too, the distrust of men in which she had been trained. He had taken her by storm, stooping to her from the height of his position, having on his side her poverty and loneliness, her inexperience and youth. Now all these things, and her ignorance of his world weighed against him. Was it to be supposed, could it be credited that he, who had come to her bearing her mother's commendation, knew nothing, though he was her kinsman? That he, who after plain hesitation and avowed doubt, laid all at her feet as soon as her father was prepared to acknowledge her-still sought her in ignorance? That he, who had read her story in black and white, still knew nothing?

No, she could not believe it. But it was a bitter thing to know that he did not love her, that he had not loved her! That he had come to her for gain! She must speak if it were only to escape, only to save herself from-from collapse. She yearned for nothing now so much as to be alone in her room.

"Good-bye," she muttered, with averted eyes and pallid lips. "I-I forgive you. Good-bye."

And she opened the door with groping fingers; and still, still looking away from him lest she should break down, she went out.

He drew a deep breath as she passed the threshold; and his eyes did not leave her. But he did not speak. Nor did Sir Robert Vermuyden until his daughter's step, light as thistledown that morning, and now uncertain and lagging, passed out of hearing, and-and at last a door closed on the floor above.

Then the elder man looked at the other. "Are you not going?" he said with stern meaning. "You have robbed me of my borough, sir-I give you joy of your cleverness. But you shall not rob me of my daughter!"

"I wonder which you love the better!" Vaughan snarled. And with the vicious gibe he took his hat and went.