“As you have given me a brother’s privilege, I shall use it and tell you the truth,” he said, seriously, to the young creature who was, he could see, all panting and as it were aflame with long-repressed emotion. “You have no right to judge another whom you have neither seen nor known, least of all in the case of your mother, to whom you owe your life.”
“And—my misery!” she said, passionately. “If she had not spoiled his life, he would have been a happy man—he might be alive, now!”
“This is a very onesided way of arguing,” he said. “Had your parents been happy together in the ordinary way, they might have had a large family of troublesome sons and daughters, who would have broken your father’s heart, as you call it, a dozen times over.”
“She was—a wretch, a wretch!” said Lilia.
In her passion she forgot her new shyness of Hugh. She had seated herself on the corner of the table—gracefully enough, she was always graceful—but she was swinging her little foot impatiently, and thrust away the breakfast things, not yet removed, with evident carelessness whether they were broken or not.
“Did it ever occur to you—that if we continue the mistakes those beloved dead of ours made here on earth, we might possibly be injuring their souls?” said Hugh, gravely. “It seems to me that real grief for the dead should show itself in continuing the good they have done—and, perhaps, in rectifying those mistakes.”
“My father never made mistakes,” said Lilia, obstinately.
“He seems to have made one, at least,” he said, somewhat bitterly—“in thinking that you and I wished—or would consent—to marry each other!”
She blushed and hung her head.
“You were speaking of souls,” she said, presently, in a somewhat defiant tone. “What do you mean by souls?”