“Three minutes more,” Quentillian reflected.
“Owen, one thing I must ask. Has she asked your pardon?”
“Yes, but indeed I don’t think——”
“No, Owen, no.” The Canon raised his hand in instant protest. “Each generous plea from you, stabs me afresh. I ask myself if my unhappy child even knows what she has lost. I thought I knew Valeria through and through—that nothing in her nature was hidden from me, from her father. I have been strangely mistaken, indeed.”
(“Another half minute.”)
“Am I harsh with her, am I harsh to my motherless girl? God knows that I was angry when I met her this evening, distraught-looking, crouching before me like a shamed and terrified creature. I cannot even now fully understand what has occurred, but her own admission was that, engaged to you, she believed herself to love another man—that she had allowed him to make love to her.”
Owen stood up resolutely.
“Aye, Owen, I do not wonder at it, if you seek the relief of movement. It is more natural so. I, too, in my day, have paced this room.”
Quentillian, however, had no desire to pace the room except for the very few steps that would put him outside it.
He debated in vain within himself the most tactful method of making this clear to Canon Morchard.