“Maybe it isn’t true—maybe Mr. Appleby made it up—but I don’t think so. At any rate, I have to proceed as if it were true, and do my best. And, first of all, I’ve got to hush up my own conscience. I’ve too much of my father’s nature to want to live here if it rightfully belongs to somebody else. I feel like a thief already. But I’m going to bear that—I’m going to live under that horrid conviction that I’m living a lie—for father’s sake.”
Maida was in earnest. By nature and by training her conscience was acutely sensitive to the finest shades of right and wrong. She actually longed to announce the possibility of another heir and let justice decide the case. But her filial devotion was, in this thing, greater even than her conscience. Her mother, too, she knew, would be crushed by the revelation of the secret, but would insist on thorough investigation, and, if need be, on renunciation of the dear home.
Her mental struggle went on. At times it seemed as if she couldn’t live beneath the weight of such a secret. Then, she knew she must do it. What was her own peace of mind compared with her father’s? What was her own freedom of conscience compared with his tranquillity?
She thought of telling Jeffrey Allen. But, she argued, he would feel as the others would—indeed, as she herself did—that the matter must be dragged out into the open and settled one way or the other.
No; she must bear the brunt of the thing alone. She must never tell any one.
Then, the next point was, would Mr. Appleby tell? He hadn’t said so, but she felt sure he would. Well, she must do all she could to prevent that. He was to return in a day or two. By that time she must work out some plan, must think up some way, to persuade him not to tell. What the argument would be, she had no idea, but she was determined to try her uttermost.
There was one way—but Maida blushed even at the thought.
Sam Appleby—young Sam—wanted to marry her—had wanted to for a year or more. Many times she had refused him, and many times he had returned for another attempt at persuasion. To consent to this would enable her to control the senior Appleby’s revelations.
It would indeed be a last resort—she wouldn’t even think of it yet; surely there was some other way!
The poor, tortured child was roused from her desperate plannings by a cheery voice, calling: