"Rash, mad, unfeeling girl!" cried her father, starting up, and gazing upon her with a look in which rage, and disappointment, and perplexity were all mingled.
He stood before her for a moment in silence, and then strode vehemently backwards and forwards in the room, with his right hand contracting and expanding, as if grasping at something. "It must be done!" he said, at length, pressing his hand upon his brow; "it must be done!" and then he recommenced his silent walk, with the shadows of many emotions coming over his countenance.
When he returned to Edith's side again, the manner and the aspect of Sir Robert Croyland were both changed. There was an expression of deep sorrow upon his countenance, of much agitation, but considerable tenderness; and, to his daughter's surprise, he took her hand in his, and pressed it affectionately.
"Edith," he said, after a short interval of silence, "I have commanded, I have insisted, I have threatened--but all in vain. Yet, in so doing, I have had in view to spare you even greater pain than could be occasioned by a father's sternness. My very love for you, my child, made me seem wanting in love. But now I must inflict the greater pain. You require, it seems, inducements stronger than obedience to a father's earnest commands, and you shall have them, however terrible for me to speak and you to hear. I will tell you all, and leave you to judge."
Edith gazed at him in surprise and terror. "Oh, do not--do not, sir!" she said; "do not try to break my heart, and put my duty to you in opposition to the fulfilment of a most sacred vow--in opposition to all the dictates of my own heart and my own conscience."
"Edith, it must be done," replied Sir Robert Croyland. "I have urged you to a marriage with young Richard Radford. I now tell you solemnly that your father's life depends upon it."
Edith clasped her hands wildly together, and gazed, for a moment, in his face, without a word, almost stupified with horror. But Sir Robert Croyland had deceived her, or attempted to deceive her, on the very same subject they were now discussing, more than once already. She knew it; and of course she doubted; for those who have been once false are never fully believed--those who have been once deceived are always suspicious of those who have deceived them, even when they speak the truth. As thought and reflection came back after the first shock, Edith found much cause to doubt: she could not see how such a thing was possible--how her refusal of Richard Radford could affect her father's life; and she replied, after a time, in a hesitating tone, "How can that be?--I do not understand it.--I do not see how----"
"I will tell you," replied Sir Robert Croyland, in a low and peculiarly-quiet voice, which had something fearful in it to his daughter's ear. "It is a long story, Edith; but you must hear it all, my child. You shall be your father's confidant--his only one. You shall share the secret, dreadful as it is, which has embittered his whole existence, rendered his days terrible, his nights sleepless, his bed a couch of fire."
Edith trembled in every limb; and Sir Robert, rising, crossed over and opened the door of the drawing-room, to see that there were none of the servants near it. Then closing it again, he returned to her side, and proceeded, holding her hand in his: "You must have remarked," he said, "and perhaps often wondered, my dear child, that Mr. Radford, a man greatly below myself in station, whose manners are repulsive and disagreeable, whose practices I condemn and reprobate, whose notions and principles I abhor, has exercised over me for many years an influence which no other person possesses, that he has induced me to do many things which my better sense and better feelings disapproved, that he has even led me to consent that my best-loved daughter should become the wife of his son, and to urge her to be so at the expense of all her feelings. You have seen all this, Edith, and wondered. Is it not so?"
"I have, indeed," murmured Edith. "I have been by no means able to account for it."