He lifted his thin brows. “You think my demand unreasonable?”
“Not only that. I think it impertinent,” Frances said, and still she spoke with that simplicity which comes from the heart.
“In—deed!” said the Bishop.
There would have followed a difficult pause, but very quietly she filled it. “You see, there are some parts of one’s life so sacred, that no man or woman on earth has any right to trespass there. In fact, I personally could not admit you even if I wished to do so. If I gave you the key, you would not know how to use it.”
“You amaze me!” said the Bishop. He got up and began jerkily to pace the room, much as his nephew had done on the night that she had sat in judgment upon him. “Are you aware,” he said after a moment, “that many men and women also have come to me with their confessions and have eased their souls thereby of many burdens?”
She watched him with her clear eyes as he moved, and in her look was something faintly quizzical. “Yes,” she said, “I can believe that many people find relief in throwing their burdens upon someone else. With me, it is not so. I prefer to bear my own.”
He stopped and confronted her. “You presume to treat this subject with levity!” he said.
“Oh, believe me, no!” She rose quickly and faced him. “I have been through too much for that. But what I have been through only God—who has kept me safe—will ever know. I could not even begin to tell an outsider that.”
The earnestness of her speech carried weight in spite of him. His face softened somewhat. “You are a strange woman, Miss Thorold,” he said. “But I am willing to believe that your motives are genuine though your methods do not always commend themselves to me. Sit down again, and kindly answer the few questions I shall put to you, which, you may as well be assured, are dictated neither by curiosity nor impertinence. I have been placed in a very peculiar position towards you, and I am doing what I conceive to be my duty.”
That moved her also. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she looked at him with a certain respect. “I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, my lord,” she said.