"It would injure the cause if she were to leave us quite at once," said Mrs. Orme.
"But how can she stay here, my dear,—with no one to see her; with none but the servants to wait upon her?"
"I should see her," said Mrs. Orme, boldly.
"Do you mean constantly—in your old, friendly way?"
"Yes, constantly; and," she added after a pause, "not only here, but at Orley Farm also." And then there was another pause between them.
Sir Peregrine certainly was not a cruel man, nor was his heart by any means hardened against the lady with whom circumstances had lately joined him so closely. Indeed, since the knowledge of her guilt had fully come upon him, he had undertaken the conduct of her perilous affairs in a manner more confidential even than that which had existed while he expected to make her his wife. But, nevertheless, it went sorely against the grain with him when it was proposed that there should still exist a close intimacy between the one cherished lady of his household and the woman who had been guilty of so base a crime. It seemed to him that he might touch pitch and not be defiled;—he or any man belonging to him. But he could not reconcile it to himself that the widow of his son should run such risk. In his estimation there was something almost more than human about the purity of the only woman that blessed his hearth. It seemed to him as though she were a sacred thing, to be guarded by a shrine,—to be protected from all contact with the pollutions of the outer world. And now it was proposed to him that she should take a felon to her bosom as her friend!
"But will that be necessary, Edith?" he said; "and after all that has been revealed to us now, will it be wise?"
"I think so," she said, speaking again with a very low voice. "Why, should I not?"
"Because she has shown herself unworthy of such friendship;—unfit for it I should say."
"Unworthy! Dear father, is she not as worthy and as fit as she was yesterday? If we saw clearly into each other's bosom, whom should we think worthy?"