“Can we not keep it from her a little longer?” she asked.
“Impossible. She will hear it by chance from others, and then think of the result. You had better leave us alone together, dear, but remain within call.”
It was well for Olive that her father was the one upon whom it devolved to soften the terrible weight of the blow. But though she listened with livid face and ashy lips, she was calmer than he had dared to hope. Roland was alive and unharmed—that was relief. But in prison—in a cold, hard cell—and on a charge of murder! It was frightful. He a murderer! No, she would never believe that. Some absurd mistake had been made, and he would soon be released. Why, it was too ridiculous, and she almost laughed aloud at the bare idea.
Then Memory, like a mocking fiend, started up to dash even that consolation from her grasp. For it suddenly carried her back over the lapse of years to the chance meeting with her lover on the beach, that lowering afternoon when the tide overtook them. His words, spoken then, now darted in characters of fire before her mental gaze.
“The trammelled imagination of a canting world reads crime into what is no crime at all.”
He had been urging a secret barrier existing between them—one that she, in common with society at large, would recognise as irrefragable. And she, mistaking the drift of the plea, had answered bravely that nothing would cause her to shrink from him.
They had talked at cross-purposes. Now—the whole mystery stood explained. By the light of this dénouement the scales fell from her eyes—even the intervening events were clear as daylight to her now. But could she now answer as bravely as then upon the lone seashore?
Every whit.
Looking up, she met her father’s eyes steadily and without speaking. And the flash of meaning in that glance revealed to him that she was no longer a blind believer in her husband’s innocence. Looking back in after years to this moment, the old priest was conscious of a distinct satisfaction at the time in making the discovery. It would save all danger of cross-purposes, though no word on the certainty could be exchanged between them.
“Oh, father! you don’t believe in—in this accusation!”