"Are you lying? Let me look at you. If so, you do it cleverly. Your face is honest. Yet I hear it was for me alone this travesty was enacted."
"Whoever told you so spoke falsely," Molly says, pale but firm, a great indignation toward Marcia rising in her breast. She has her hands on the back of a chair, and is gazing anxiously but openly at the old man. "Why should I seek to offend you, who have been so kind to me,—whose bread I have eaten? You do not understand: you wrong me."
"I thought it was your mother," whispers he, with a quick shiver, "from her grave, returned to reproach me,—to remind me of all the miserable past. It was a senseless thought. But the likeness was awful,—appalling. She was my favorite daughter, yet she of all creatures was the one to thwart me most; and I did not forgive. I left her to pine for the luxuries to which she was accustomed from her birth, and could not then procure. She was delicate. I let her wear her heart out waiting for a worthless pardon. And what a heart it was! Then I would not forgive; now—now I crave forgiveness. Oh, that the dead could speak!"
He covers his face with his withered hands, that shake and tremble like October leaves, and a troubled sigh escapes him. For the moment the stern old man has disappeared; only the penitent remains.
"Dear grandpapa, be comforted," says Molly, much affected, sinking on her knees beside him. Never before, by either brother or grandfather, has her dead mother been so openly alluded to. "She did forgive. So sweet as she was, how could she retain a bitter feeling? Listen to me. Am I not her only child? Who so meet to offer you her pardon? Let me comfort you."
Mr. Amherst makes no reply, but he gently presses the fingers that have found their way around his neck.
"I, too, would ask pardon," Molly goes on, in her sweet, low, trainante voice, that has a sob in it here and there. "How shall I gain it after all that I have done—to distress you so, although unintentionally?—And you think hardly of me, grandpapa? You think I did it to annoy you?"
"No, no; not now."
"I have made you ill," continues Molly, still crying; "I have caused you pain. Oh, grandpapa! do say you are not angry with me."
"I am not. You are a good child, and Marcia wronged you. Go now, and forget all I may have said. I am weak at times, and—and—— Go, child; I am better alone."