Ah! That was a sharper pang than she knew. Oh, for the sunny satisfaction of that walk across the park back again! And the sun shining now on his black misery had only shifted a point or two.
"And the other one," went on the cool voice, "who was married the other day. Their father in the dock! in prison!"
He rallied again. "You can drop that nonsense too," he said. "It's a bogy that doesn't frighten me."
"Not the dock? I admit that you might escape the prison—though Humphrey couldn't very well."
"Whatever mistake I may have made—and I'm not yet prepared to admit that I made any—I did nothing that I could be even asked to justify in a court of law."
"Well, I think you're wrong there. But in any case you would fear the court of your friends and neighbours and the whole public opinion of England hardly less than a court of law, wouldn't you?"
This was so true that he showed his sense of it in his face.
"Oh, my dear good man, how can you be so foolish as to run the risk of it? Look here, Mr. Clinton, supposing I admit the theft of the star, and say that I have deserved what I got for that, do I really suffer nothing whatever by bearing the burden of Susan's far bigger theft all my life? Be honest now. Take it as a woman's weakness. Wouldn't it mean a good deal to me to be cleared of that?"
She waited for his answer, which was slow in coming. He fought hard against his inclination to give an evasive one. "Yes—it might—it would," he said.
"Then I bear it, and save her name, now she is dead; and your name. I save the honour of you Clintons, who think so much of yourselves. If I do that, and allow the shame you have fastened on to me to rest where it is, don't I deserve some little kindness from you—some help in the life I shall have to live, right away from all that has ever made my life worth living to me before, right away from all my friends? I should get some of them back, you know, if it were known that that, at least, wasn't true of me."