"Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I will do what you wish. Ah, no, I can't. I can't do it. Don't ask me."
"Beg her, father, beg her," whispered Mrs. Bays to her spouse when she saw that Rita was wavering. Bays hesitated; but a look from the bed brought him to a proper condition of obedience:—
"Rita, won't you save your father and brother?" he asked, taking his daughter's hands in his own. "We are all ruined and disgraced and lost forever if you do not. Rita, I beg you to do this for my sake."
The father's appeal she could not withstand. She covered her face with her hands; then, suddenly drawing herself upright and drying her tears, she said in a low voice, "I will."
Those two little words changed the world for father and son from darkness to light. They seemed also to possess wonderful curative powers for heart trouble, for within three minutes they snatched my Lady Jeffreys from the jaws of death and placed her upright in the bed. Within another minute she was on her feet, well and hearty as ever, busily engaged evolving a plan for immediate action.
"Write to Williams at once," she said to Rita, "asking him to call this evening. Tell him you want to talk to him about your father's affairs."
Rita again hesitated, but she had given her word, and accordingly wrote:—
"Mr. Williams: If not otherwise engaged, will you please call this evening. I am in great trouble about my father and Tom, and wish to talk to you concerning their affairs.
"Rita."
Tom delivered the note, which threw Williams into a state of ecstasy bordering on intoxication.
I beg you to pause and consider this girl's piteous condition. Never in all the eighteen years of her life had she unnecessarily given pain to a human heart. A tender, gentle strength, love for all who were near her, fidelity to truth, and purity without the blemish of even an impure thought, had gone to make up the sum of her existence. As a reward for all these virtues she was now called upon to bear the burden of an unspeakable anguish. What keener joy could she know than that which had come to her through her love for Dic? What agony more poignant could she suffer than the loss of him? But, putting Dic aside, what calamity could so blacken the future for her, or for any pure girl, as marriage with a man she loathed? We often speak of these tragedies regretfully and carelessly; but imagine yourself in her position, and you will pity this poor girl of mine, who was about to be sold to the man whom she despised—and who, worst of all, loved her. Madame Pompadour says in her memoirs, "I was married to one whom I did not love, and a misfortune still greater was that he loved me." That condition must be the acme of a woman's suffering.