“No,” she said, turning on him passionately, “but the responsibility rests on me; for whatever my father may have done that was wrong or foolish was for me. There is an excuse for him. You—other people—outsiders—don’t know. He hasn’t wanted these things for himself. It was all done for me. I was his idol, and it has almost broken his heart that his money and position were gone before I was old enough to profit by them. He always wanted to be rich again, but it was for me. He wanted me to have everything—pretty clothes to wear, and good things to eat, and theaters and amusements, like other girls. He tried to keep up with his old bonanza friends who were tired of him and had no use for him, because he thought their wives might be kind to me and ask me to their houses. He has forgotten himself and what he owed to me, but it was because he loved me so much.”
“Viola dear,” he said pleadingly, “I understand all this. No one blames the colonel.”
She did not seem to hear him. Her mood was past control.
“When we first met you things were at their worst. We were in terrible need. We had had some money—quite a good deal—three years before; it was for a mortgage on the house, or something; but it had all gone, mostly in Pine Street. Yours must have gone there, too. Everything he has had of late years goes there, because he is determined to make a second fortune for me before he dies. And he never will—poor old man! he never will. I did what I could and made a little, but he couldn’t bear it, because he hated to think I worked at anything. So that was why he went to you. We were in despair when we knew you first—we were starving.”
“Dear child, why go over all this? It’s only a pain to us both.”
He tried to take her hands, but she drew them back and made a gesture as though pushing him away.
“I didn’t know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if he told me what was not true, you can’t blame him. You’ve never known what it feels like to have some one you love wanting the necessaries of life. You could beg for them—steal for them! And when I told you those things about the mining stock, what did you think I meant? What did you believe?”
She spoke less to him than to her own dazed and miserable consciousness, which moment by moment saw new matter for humiliation in the deception of which she had been the victim.
But Gault, with the guilt of his own hateful suspicions weighing upon him, feared that she had realized his previous state of mistrust, and said fervently:
“If I did believe what was a wrong to you, forgive me, Viola. I was a blind fool.”