"I am Father Temple, vowed to celibacy, and somewhere in the wide, cruel world a wife and child of mine may have gone down to perdition because I was a coward—a vile coward, too base for a brave man to recognize. I knew you would despise me, and I kept silent as long as I could. Do you wonder?"
Mr. Herriott stood over him like an avenging Viking.
"You betrayed a woman? Wife, or victim of——"
"Both. I married and I deserted her."
"The marriage was legal—no swindling sham?"
"Legal in form, though I was a minor and she a mere child."
"And you ensnared her deliberately, intending to——"
The priest sprang to his feet and his eyes flashed.
"I loved her, and married her secretly, and intended no wrong; but before I could publicly claim her—before I was of age and dared to face my father with the fact of my marriage—I lost her. She disappeared as completely as if the ocean rolled over her."
"Is this the unvarnished truth? There is nothing worse, nothing more heinous than what you have told me?" Mr. Herriott breathed quickly, as his keen, cold eyes searched severely the wan face before him.