“That balances them,” he said. “Perhaps I had better do the accounts for the future. If I have to do them in the long run, I may as well do them at once, instead of wasting your time over them.”
Helen stood up, her resentment shewing itself a little.
“Certainly, if you prefer,” she said.
He did not answer, but ran a metal clip neatly through the receipted bills, and swept the coins back into the money-box. Then he turned to her quickly.
“What do you intend to do, Helen?” he asked. “As your father, I think I have a right to ask you, since you have shewn no sign of wishing to tell me.”
The gulf between them seemed to her at that moment immeasurably wide, and his tone was harsh and cruel,—it cut her, but cut like a blunt knife, with sawing and tearing.
“Father, don’t speak to me like that,” she said. “I can’t bear it, and it does no good. I am trying, and I am going to continue trying, to do my duty to you—--“
For one moment the sternness vanished from his face.
“You are going to give him up?” he asked.
“No; but I am going to live quietly here if you will have me, for the next six months,” she said, “doing my work in the parish just as usual. During that time I will not see Frank. If you wish, I will not even write to him, except just once.”