“Yes, half mad, and deceived!”
“Yes. There is something behind all this—I know,” cried Jenny, wildly. “They have persecuted her so, and encouraged that wretched boy to pay her attentions, till in despair she has run away to take refuge with some other friends.”
“With Claud Wilton!” said Pierce, bitterly.
“Silence, sir! No. Women are not such weak double-faced creatures as you think. No, it is as I say; and oh! Pierce, dear, he was out late last night, and when he got back found her going away and followed her.”
“Fiction—imagination,” he said bitterly. “You are inventing all this to try and comfort me, little woman, but your woven basket will not hold water. It leaks at the very beginning. How could you know that he was out late last night?”
Jenny’s cheeks were scarlet, and she turned away her face.
“There, you see, you are beaten at once, Jenny, and that I have some reason for what I have said about women; but there are exceptions to every rule, and my little sister is one of them. I did not include her among the weak ones.”
To his astonishment she burst into a passionate storm of sobs and tears, and in words confused and only half audible, she accused herself of being as weak and foolish as the rest, and, as he made out, quite unworthy of his trust.
“Oh! Pierce, darling,” she cried wildly, as she sank upon her knees in front of his chair; “I’m a wicked, wicked girl, and not deserving of all you think about me. Believe in poor Kate, and not in me, for indeed, indeed, she is all that is good and true.”
“A man cannot govern his feelings, Sissy,” he said, half alarmed now at the violence of her grief. “I must believe in you always, as my own little girl. How could I do otherwise, when you have been everything to me for so long, ever since you were quite a little girl and I told you not to cry for I would be father and mother to you, both.”