"Do you mean," he said at last, in slow broken sentences, as his mind wrestled with the strange tidings; "am I to understand that Molly, that bright beautiful creature, has been made unhappy through me? Oh, my dear Tanty," striving with a laugh, "the idea is too absurd, I am old enough to be her father, you know—what evidence can you have for a statement so distressing, so extraordinary."
"I am not quite in my dotage yet," quoth Tanty, drily; "neither am I in the habit of making unfounded assertions, nephew. I have heard what the girl has said with her own lips, I have read what she has written in her diary; she has sobbed and cried over your cruelty in these very arms—I don't know what further evidence——"
But Sir Adrian had started up again—"Molly crying, Molly crying for me—God help us all—Cécile's child, whom I would give my life to keep from trouble! Tanty, if this is true—it must be true since you say so, I hardly know myself what I am saying—then I am to blame, deeply to blame—and yet—I have not said one word to the child—did nothing...." here he paused and a deep flush overspread his face to the roots of his hair; "except indeed in the first moment of her arrival—when she came in upon me as I was lost in memories of the past—like the spirit of Cécile."
"Humph," said Tanty, pointedly, "but then you see what you took for Cécile's spirit happened to be Molly in the flesh." She fixed her sharp eyes upon her nephew, who, struck into confusion by her words, seemed for the moment unable to answer. Then, as if satisfied with the impression produced, she folded her hands over the umbrella handle and observed in more placid tones than she had yet used:
"And now we must see what is to be done."
Adrian began to pace the room in greater perturbation.
"What is to be done?" he repeated, "alas! what can be done? Tanty, you will believe me when I tell you that I should have cut off my right hand rather than brought this thing upon the child—but she is very young—the impression, thank heaven, cannot in the nature of things endure. She will meet some one worthy of her—with you, Tanty, kindest of hearts, I can safely trust her future. But that she should suffer now, and through me, that bright creature who flitted in upon my dark life, like some heaven-sent messenger—these are evil tidings. Tanty, you must take her away, you must distract her mind, you must tell her what a poor broken-down being I am, how little worthy of her sweet thoughts, and she will learn, soon learn, to forget me, to laugh at herself."
Although addressing the old lady, he spoke like a man reasoning with himself, and the words dropped from his lips as if drawn from a very well of bitterness. Tanty listened to him in silence, but the tension of her whole frame betrayed that she was only gathering her forces for another explosion.
When Adrian's voice ceased there was a moment's silence and then the storm burst; whisking herself out of her chair, the umbrella came into play once more. But though it was only to thump the table, it was evident Miss O'Donoghue would more willingly have laid it about the delinquent's shoulders.
"Adrian, are you a man at all?" she ejaculated fiercely. Then with sudden deadly composure: "So this is the reparation you propose to make for the mischief you have wrought?"