"Secrets!" he re-echoed. "What possible secrets can I have?"
"I don't know," I said, sinking wearily back on the sofa. "Indeed, Ernest, I don't want to be selfish or exacting, but I am very unhappy."
"Yes, I see it, poor child. And if I have neglected you at the table I do not wonder you are out of patience. I know how it has happened. While you were pouring out the coffee I busied myself in caring for my father and Martha, and so forgot you. I do not give this as an excuse, but as a reason. I have really no excuse, and am ashamed of myself."
"Don't say that, darling," I cried, "it is I who ought to be ashamed for making such an ado about a trifle."
"It is not a trifle," he said; "and now to the other points. I dare say I have been careless about consulting Martha. But she has always been a sort of oracle in our family, and we all look up to her, and she is so much older than you. Then as to the secrets. Martha comes to my office to help me look over my books. I have been careless about my accounts, and she has kindly undertaken to attend to them for me."
"Could not I have done that?"
"No; why should your little head be troubled about money matters? But to go on. I see that it was thoughtless in me not to tell you what we were about. But I am greatly perplexed and harassed in many ways. Perhaps you would feel better to know all about it. I have only kept it from you to spare you all the anxiety I could."
"Oh, Ernest," I said, "ought not a wife to share in all her husband's cares?"
"No," he returned; "but I will tell you all that is annoying me now. My father was in business in our native town, and went on prosperously for many years. Then the tide turned-he met with loss after loss, till nothing remained but the old homestead, and on that there was a mortgage. We concealed the state of things from my mother; her health was delicate, and we never let her know a trouble we could spare her. Now she has gone, and we have found it necessary to sell our old home and to divide and scatter the family. My father's mental distress when he found others suffering from his own losses threw him into the state in which you see him now. I have therefore assumed his debts, and with God's help hope in time to pay them to the uttermost farthing. It will be necessary for us to live economically until this is done. There are two pressing cases that I am trying to meet at once. This has given me a preoccupied air, I have no doubt, and made you suspect and misunderstand me. But now you know the whole, my darling."
I felt my injustice and childish folly very keenly, and told him so.