“If she was a capricious girl, I could understand it, but that's what she never was.”
“No, no; she was true and honest in all things.”
“It may be something about her father; he's an old man, and failing. She cannot bear to leave him, perhaps, and it's just possible she could n't bring herself to say it. Don't you think it might be that?”
“Don't give me a hope, Tony. Don't let me see a glimpse of light, my dear friend, if there 's to be no fulfilment after.”
The tone of emotion he spoke in made Tony unable to reply for some minutes. “I have no right to say this, it is true,” said he, kindly; “but it's the nearest guess I can make: I know, for she told me so herself, she 'd not go and be a governess again if she could help it.”
“Oh, if you were to be right, Tony! Oh, if it was to be as you suspect; for we could make him come out and live with us here! We've plenty of room, and it would be a pleasure to see him happy, and at rest, after his long life of labor. Let us read the letter over together, Tony, and see how it agrees with that thought;” and now they both crouched down beside the light, and read it over from end to end. Here and there were passages that they pondered over seriously, and some they read twice and even thrice, and although they brought to this task the desire to confirm a speculation, there was that in the tone of the letter that gave little ground for their hope. It was so self-accusing throughout, that it was plain she herself laid no comfort to her own heart in the thought of a high duty fulfilled.
“Are you of the same mind still?” asked M'Gruder, sadly, and with little of hopefulness in his voice; and Tony was silent.
“I see you are not. I see that you cannot give me such a hope.”
“Have you answered this yet?”
“Yes, I have written it; but it's not sent off. I kept it by me to read over, and see that there was nothing harsh or cruel,—nothing I would not say in cold blood; for oh, Tony! I will avow it was hard to forgive her; no, I don't mean that, but it was hard to bring myself to believe I had lost her forever. For a while I thought the best thing I could do was to comfort myself by thinking how false she was, and I took out all her letters, to convince me of her duplicity; but what do you think I found? They all showed me, what I never saw till then, that she was only going to be my wife out of a sort of resignation; that the grief and fretting of her poor father at leaving her penniless in the world was more than she could bear; and that to give him the comfort of his last few days in peace, she 'd make any sacrifice; and through all the letters, though I never saw it before, she laid stress on what she called doing her best to make me happy, but there was no word of being happy herself.”