Still Hubert did not answer. He dared not let her see his face; she must not know the torture her words inflicted on him. She went on.
"Lately I have thought that it would be better for me to face the whole thing out, and not act as if I were ashamed of my father, who is no murderer, but a martyr and an innocent man. I took my first step last night by telling your aunt Miss Vane that 'West' was only an assumed name. I had never said that before. Do you remember how she looked at me—how she hated me—when we stood outside the gates of Beechfield Park that afternoon? The sight of me made her ill; and, if she knew me by my right name, it would make her ill again. If I had known that you were their cousin, I would never have let you see my face!"
"Cynthia, have a little mercy!" cried Hubert, suddenly starting up, and dashing his hair back from his discolored, distorted face. "Do you think I am such a brute? What does it matter to me about your father? Was I so unkind, so cruel to you when you were a child that you cannot trust me now?"
"No," she said, looking at him gently, but with a sort of aloofness which he had never seen in her before; "you were very good to me then. You saved me from the workhouse; you would not even let me go to the charity-school that Mrs. Rumbold recommended. You told me to be a good girl, and said that some day I should see my father again." She put her hand to her throat, as if choked by some hysteric symptom, but at once controlled herself and went on. "I see it all now. It was through you, I suppose, that I was sent to St. Elizabeth's, where I was made into something like a civilised being. It was you to whom they applied as to whether I should be removed from the lower to the upper school; and you—out of your charity to the murderer's daughter—you paid for me forty pounds a year. I did not know that I had so much to be grateful for to you. I have taken gifts from you since, not knowing; but this is the last of it—I will never take another now!"
"Are you so proud, Cynthia, that you cannot bear me to have helped you a little? My love, I did not know, I never guessed that you were Westwood's daughter. But can you never forgive me for having done my best for you. Do you think I love you one whit the less?"
"Oh, I see—you think that I am ungenerous," cried Cynthia, "and that it is my pride which stands in your way! Well, so it is—this kind of pride—that I will not accept gifts from those who believe my father to be a guilty man when I believe in his innocence. They did well never to tell me who was my benefactor—for whom I was taught to pray when I was at St. Elizabeth's. If I had known, the place would not have held me for a day when I was old enough to understand! At first I was too ignorant, too much stupefied by the whole thing to understand that the Vanes were keeping me at school and supporting me. It is horrible—it is sickening—to send my father to prison, to the gallows, and his child to school! Much better have let me go to the workhouse! Do you think I wish to be indebted to people who think my father a murderer?"
"You mistake!" said Hubert quickly. "The Vanes knew nothing about it. If Mrs. Rumbold ever said so, it was my fault. I did not like her to think that I was doing it alone. And, as for me, Cynthia, I never thought your father guilty—never!"
He trembled beneath the burning gaze she turned on him, and his color changed from white to red, and then to white again. He felt as if he had been guilty of the meanest subterfuge of his whole life.
"You never thought so?" she said, with a terrible gasp. "Then who was guilty? Who did that murder, Hubert? Do—you—know?"
She could not say, "Was your sister guilty, and are you shielding her?"