‘What?’ asked Charles, not catching her very low tones, as she sat behind him, with her head bent down.
‘I don’t think it would be right,’ she repeated, more steadily.
‘Not right for you to say you don’t think him a villain?’
‘Papa said I was to have no—‘and there her voice was stopped with tears.
‘This is absurd, Amy,’ said Charles; ‘when it all was approved at first, and now my father is acting on a wrong impression; what harm can there be in it? Every one would do so.’
‘I am sure he would not think it right,’ faltered Amy.
‘He? You’ll never have any more to say to him, if you don’t take care what you are about.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Amy, in a broken voice. ‘It is not right.’
‘Nonsense! folly!’ said Charles. ‘You are as bad as the rest. When they are persecuting, and slandering, and acting in the most outrageous way against him, and you know one word of yours would carry him through all, you won’t say it, to save him from distraction, and from doing all my father fancies he has done. Then I believe you don’t care a rush for him, and never want to see him again, and believe the whole monstrous farrago. I vow I’ll say so.’
‘O Charles, you are very cruel!’ said Amy, with an irrepressible burst of weeping.