"I'm telling you what everybody thinks. Would your father treat you as he does now without a cause? And are you to remain here, and to go down and down in the world till you become such a one as Pat Carroll? And you will have to live like Pat Carroll, with the knowledge in everyone's heart that you have been untrue to your father. They are becoming dishonest, false knaves, untrue to their promises, the very scum of the earth, because of their credulity and broken vows; but what am I to say of you? You will have been as false and perfidious and credulous as they. You will have thrown away everything good to gratify the ambition of some empty traitor. And you will have done it all against your own father." Here she paused and looked at him. They were roaming at the time round the demesne, and he walked on, but said nothing. "I know what you are thinking of, Flory."
"What am I thinking of?"
"You're thinking of your duty; you are thinking whether you can bring yourself to make a clean breast of it, and break the promises which you have made."
"Nobody should break a promise," said he.
"And nobody should tell a lie. When one finds oneself in the difficulty one has to go back and find out where the evil thing first began."
"I gave the promise first," said Florian.
"No such promise should ever have been given. Your first duty in the matter was to your father."
"I don't see that at all," said Florian. "My first duty is to my religion."
"Even to do evil for its sake? Go to Father Malachi, and ask him."
"Father Malachi isn't the man to whom I should like to tell everything. Father Brosnan is a much better sort of clergyman. He is my confessor, and I choose to go by what he tells me."