She drew back from her father, recoiling from the thing he demanded of her. To her it seemed impious that her father’s hands should touch that book; blackly impious that he should drag it down into the mire of his own unholy purposes.
“No,” she whispered, “not that.... No.”
“Yes, I say.... Swear.”
Philip stepped a pace forward. “Wait,” he said. “You’re going at this like a bull. Have a little sense about it, von Essen.... Listen, Miss von Essen, this thing’s no joke to your father. You’ve scared him, and he ain’t acting right. You listen to me a minute. Here’s how we stand: If you blow on us it’s more ’n likely we dangle at the end of a rope. Just stop a minute and see if you want your father dangling from a rope.... Not so much on account of him, you understand, but on account of—your mother....” He had seen the look on Hildegarde’s face when Herman von Essen had mentioned his wife, and a keen brain lay back of his sharp eyes. “It’s her you got to think of.... If she was alive it would kill her, likely, to know her husband was hung for a spy. Now wouldn’t it? She was a good woman like you....”
“She was good ... good.”
“To be sure.... And folks thinks of her as good. You got her memory to look after, hain’t you? Well?... Wouldn’t folks begin to think things about her if the man she picked out to marry was hung, public-like, and the papers was full of him?”
She moaned and shut her eyes. She saw those papers with their screaming headlines.
“And think of you. After all, he’s your father. Nobody expects a daughter to betray her father, and nobody thinks any better of her if she does.... They’d say your father was a traitor to the country, but that you was a traitor to your own flesh and blood. I know folks, Miss von Essen, and that’s how they’d look at it. They’d point to you and say, ‘There’s the girl that got her father hung.’ And you couldn’t never bear that.... It’s a bad mess any way you look at it, and there hain’t any way out of it for you but to keep quiet.... Jest make believe you don’t know anything. You’d catch it double, Miss. Once for givin’ away your father, and once for bein’ the daughter of a spy that was hung.... Your mother would ’a’ stood by him like it was her duty to do. Bein’ as she’s gone, you’re sort of in her place....”
“Mother,” Hildegarde said, in a voice so low there was almost no sound above a breath. She bowed and touched her lips to the cold leather. “I swear,” she said.... “And now may I go? I’m—so—tired.”
“Let me help you to your room, Miss,” said Philip, but she would not let him touch her, and tottered up the stairs alone.