"He will admit of no more than I have said," answered Sir Robert Croyland: "it is as vain to entreat him, as to ask the hangman to delay his fatal work. He is hard as iron, without feeling, without heart. His reasons, too, are specious, my dear child. His son, it seems, has taken part this morning in a smuggling affray with the troops--blood has been shed--some of the soldiers have been killed--all who have had a share therein are guilty of felony; and it has become necessary that the young man should be hurried out of the country without delay. To him such a flight is nothing: he has no family to blacken with the record of crime--he has no honourable name to stain--his means are all prepared; his flight is easy, his escape secure; but his father insists that you shall be his bride before he goes, or he gives your father up, not to justice, but to the law--which in pretending to administer justice, but too often commits the very crimes it seems to punish. Four short days are all that he allows; and then you are to be that youth's bride."
"What! the bride of a felon!" cried Edith, her spirit rising for a moment--"of one stained with every vice and every crime--to vow falsely that I will love him whom I must ever hate--to break all my promises to one I must ever love--to deceive, prove false and forsworn to the noble and the true, and give myself to the base, the lawless, and the abhorred! Oh, my father--my father! is it possible that you can ask such a thing?"
The fate of Sir Robert Croyland and his daughter hung in the balance. One harsh command, one unkind word, with justice and truth on her side, and feebleness and wrong on his, might have armed her to resist; but the old man's heart was melted. The struggle that he witnessed in his child was, for a moment--remark, only for a moment--more terrible than that within his own breast. There was something in the innocence and truth, something in the higher attributes of the passions called into action in her breast, something in the ennobling nature of the conflicting feelings of her heart--the filial tenderness, the adherence to her engagements, the abhorrence of the bad, the love of the good, the truth, the honour, and the piety, all striving one with the other, that for a time made the mean passion of fear seem small and insignificant. "I do not ask you, my child," he said--"I do not urge you--I ask, I urge you no more! The worst bitterness is past. I have told my own child the tale of my sorrows, my folly, my weakness, and my danger. I have inflicted the worst upon you, Edith, and on myself; and I leave it to your own heart to decide. After your generous, your noble offer, to sacrifice your property and leave yourself nothing, for my sake, it were cruel--it were, indeed, base, to urge you farther. To avoid this, dreadful disclosure, to shelter you and myself from such horrible details, I have often been stern, and harsh, and menacing.--Forgive me, Edith, but it is past! You now know what is on the die; and it is your own hand casts it. Your father's life, the honour of your family, the high name we have ever borne--these are to be lost and won. But I urge it not--I ask it not. You only must and can decide."
Edith, who had risen, stood before him, pale as ashes, with her hands clasped so tight that the blood retreated from her fingers, where they pressed against each other, leaving them as white as those of the dead--her eyes fixed, straining, but sightless, upon the ground. All that she saw, all that she knew, all that she felt, was the dreadful alternative of fates before her. It was more than her frame could bear--it was more than almost any human heart could endure. To condemn a father to death, to bring the everlasting regret into her heart, to wander, as if accurst, over the earth, with a parent's blood crying out for vengeance! It was a terrible thought indeed. Then again, she remembered the vows that she had taken, the impossibility of performing those that were asked of her, the sacrifice of the innocent to the guilty, the perjury that she must commit, the dark and dreadful future before her, the self-reproach that stood on either hand to follow her through life! She felt as if her heart was bursting; and the next moment, all the blood seemed to fly from it, and leave it cold and motionless. She strove to speak--her voice was choked; but then, again, she made an effort; and a few words broke forth, convulsively--"To save you, my father, I would do anything," she cried. "I will do anything--but----"
She could not finish; her sight failed her; her heart seemed crushed; her head swam; the colour left her lips; and she fell prone at her father's feet, without one effort to save herself.
Sir Robert Croyland's first proceeding was, to raise her and lay her on the sofa; but before he called any one, he gazed at her a moment or two in silence. "She has fainted," he said. "Poor child!--Poor girl!" But then came another thought: "She said she would do anything," he murmured; "her words were, 'I will'--It is surely a consent."
He forgot--he heeded not--he would not heed, that she had added, "But----"
"Yes, it was a consent," he repeated; "it must have been a consent. I will hasten to tell him. If we can but gain a few days, it is something. Who can say what a few days may bring? At all events, it is a relief.--It will obtain the delay she wished--I will tell him.--It must have been a consent;" and calling the servants and Edith's own maid, to attend upon her, he hastened out of the house, fearful of waiting till her senses returned, lest other words should snatch from him the interpretation he chose to put upon those which had gone before. In an instant, however, he returned, went into the library, and wrote down on a scrap of paper:--
"Thanks, dearest Edith!--thanks! I go in haste to tell Mr. Radford the promise you have given."
Then hurrying out again, he put the paper, which he had folded up, into the hands of the groom, who held his horse. "That for Miss Croyland," he said, "when she has quite recovered; but not before;" and, mounting with speed, he rode away as fast as he could go.