"See how truth is always best," said Mr. Rushleigh. "If you had kept back your knowledge of this, you would have sealed up a painful doubt for your own tormenting. That man, James Regan, came to me this morning. There is good in the fellow, after all. He told me, just as you have, and as Hardy did, the words he spoke in passion. He was afraid, he said, they might be brought up against him. And so he came to 'own up,' and account for his time; and to beg me to believe that he never had any definite thought of harm. I told him I did believe it; and then the poor fellow, rough as he is, turned pale, and burst into tears. Last night gave him a lesson, I think, that will go far to take the hardness out of him. Blasland says, 'he worked like five men and a horse,' at the fire."
Faith's face glowed as she listened, at the nobleness of these two; of the generous, Christian gentleman—of the coarse workman, who wore his nature, like his garb—the worse part of an everyday.
Fire and loss are not all calamity, when such as this comes of them.
Her own recital was soon finished.
Mr. Rushleigh listened, giving his whole sympathy to the danger she had faced, his fresh and fervent acknowledgment and admiring praise to the prompt daring she had shown, as if these things, and naught else, had been in either mind.
At these thanks—at this praise—Faith shrank.
"Oh, Mr. Rushleigh!" she interrupted, with a low, pained, humbled entreaty—"don't speak so! Only forgive me—if you can!"
Her hands lifted themselves with a slight, imploring gesture toward him. He laid his own upon them, gently, soothingly.
"I will not have you trouble or reproach yourself, Faith," he answered, meeting her meaning, frankly, now. "There are things beyond our control. All we can do is to be simply true. There is something, I know, which you think lies between us to be spoken of. Do not speak at all, if it be hard for you. I will tell the boy that it was a mistake—that it cannot be."
But the father's lip was a little unsteady, to his own feeling, as he said the words.