"More than enough!" was the bitter answer.
"And then a parcel disappears, and there's a lame excuse for that—and a policeman finds you in Kent Street at a receiver's house—the house of a noted thief, that you must have known long ago——"
"I went there—but no matter, you'll not believe me," said Mattie.
"And so I was obliged to have you watched for my own protection's sake, and you were seen to leave the house last night, and come back in a cab after the shop was open. And if all that's not enough to drive a business man wild, why, I never was a man fit for business at all."
Mattie gathered up her bonnet and shawl from the chair on which they had been placed, and proceeded to put them on again, keeping her dark eyes fixed on Mr. Wesden's face.
"There's only one thing which I'll agree with, sir," she said, her voice faltering despite her effort to keep firm, "and that's the first speech you made me. It's quite time that you and I said 'good-bye' to one another!"
"Well—it is!"
"I don't know whether you wish it or not—I don't care!—but I will go away at once, trusting in Him whom your wife taught me first to pray to. I will go away without anger in my heart against you—for oh! you have been very good and kind to me, and I shall be grateful again when to-day's hard words go further and further back. I will hope in the time when you will know all, and be sorry that you lost your trust in me so soon. Better to doubt me than—others?"
She corrected herself in time; she remembered her promise to Harriet. She saw how easy it was for a few errors, a few mistakes to make this strange man forget all the good efforts of a life—deceived in Mr. Wesden as she had been, she could not gauge in those excited moments the depths of his affection for his daughter.
In the avowal there would be danger to Harriet; so, for Harriet's sake, let her take the blame and go away. Harriet could only have cleared up the last mystery—the rest affected herself. She had had never more than half a character—she rose from crime, and its antecedents rose again with her at the first suspicion against her truthful conduct. It was very hard to go away—but it was her only step, and he wished it also—he, who had been almost a father to her until then.