“I know.”
“Has he been swearing it?”
“He has not spoken of it to me.”
“Here I am in a woman’s web!” cried the colonel. “Is it your instinct tells you it’s not true? or what? what? You have not denied that you love the man.”
“I know he is not immoral.”
“There you shoot again! Haven’t you a yes or a no for your father?”
Cecilia cast her arms round his neck, and sobbed.
She could not bring it to her lips to say (she would have shunned the hearing) that her defence of Beauchamp, which was a shadowed avowal of the state of her heart, was based on his desire to read to her the conclusion of Dr. Shrapnel’s letter touching a passion to be overcome; necessarily therefore a passion that was vanquished, and the fullest and bravest explanation of his shifting treatment of her: nor would she condescend to urge that her lover would have said he loved her when they were at Steynham, but for the misery and despair of a soul too noble to be diverted from his grief and sense of duty, and, as she believed, unwilling to speak to win her while his material fortune was in jeopardy.
The colonel cherished her on his breast, with one hand regularly patting her shoulder: a form of consolation that cures the disposition to sob as quickly as would the drip of water.
Cecilia looked up into his eyes, and said, “We will not be parted, papa, ever.”