These thoughts tracked her along every line of the letter, and through all the terrible details she was reading; the woman herself, in her craft and subtlety, absorbed her entire attention. Even when she had read to the end, and learned the tidings of Clara's fortune, her mind would involuntarily turn back to Mrs. Penthony Morris and her wiles. It was in an actual terror at the picture her mind had drawn of this deep designing woman that Charles found her sitting with the letter before her, and her eyes staring wildly and on vacancy.
“I see, May,” said he, gently taking her hand, and seating himself at her side, “this dreadful letter has shocked you, as it has shocked me; but remember, dearest, we are only looking back at a peril we have all escaped. She has not separated us; she has not involved us in the disgrace of relationship to her; she is not one of us; she is not anything even to poor Clara; and though we may feel how narrowly we have avoided all our dangers, let us be grateful for that safety for which we really contributed nothing ourselves. Is it not so, dearest May? We have gained the harbor, and never knew that we had crossed a quicksand.”
“And, after all, Charles, painful as all this is now, and must be when remembered hereafter, it is not without its good side. We will all draw closer to each other, and love more fondly where we can trust implicitly.”
“And you forgive me, May?”
“Certainly not—if you assume forgiveness in that fashion!”
Now, though this true history records that May Leslie arose with a deep flush upon her cheek, and her massy roll of glossy hair somewhat dishevelled, there is no mention of what the precise fashion was in which Charles Heathcote sued out his pardon; nor, indeed, with our own narrow experiences of such incidents, do we care to hazard a conjecture.
“And now as to my father, May. How much of this letter shall we tell him?”
“All; every word of it. It will pain him, as it has pained us, or even more; but, that pain once over, he will come back, without one reserved thought, to all his old affection for us, and we shall be happy as we used to be.”