"And yet you persisted, Ellen: this is indeed a strange contradiction to your seemingly sincere sorrow for a similar fault a few months back. What did you move it for?"
For full a minute Ellen hesitated, thus unhappily confirming the suspicion that when she did reply it was another equivocation.
"To get a book which had fallen behind."
"I do not know how a book could have fallen behind, unless it had been put or thrown there, Ellen; you said, too, that you did not replace the broken flower for the purpose of concealment. I hardly know how to believe either of these assertions. Why did you leave the room just now?"
"Because—because—I knew you would question me, and—and—I felt I should not have courage to speak the truth—and I knew—you would be so—so displeased." The words were scarcely articulate.
"I should have been better satisfied, Ellen, if your fear of my displeasure had prevented the committal of your first fault, not to aggravate it so sinfully by both acted and spoken untruths. Painful as it is to me in this season of festivity and enjoyment to inflict suffering, I should share your sin if I did not adopt some measures to endeavor at least to make you remember and so avoid it in future. I have told you so very often that it is not me you mostly offend when you speak or act falsely but God himself—who is Truth—that I fear words alone will be of no avail. Go to your own room, Ellen; perhaps solitude and thought, when your brother and cousins are so happy and unrestrained, may bring you to a sense of your aggravated misconduct better than any thing else. You will not leave your apartment, except for the hours of devotion and exercise—which you will take with Ellis, not with me—till I think you have had sufficient time to reflect on all I have said to you on this subject."
Ellen quitted the room without answering; but it was several minutes before Mrs. Hamilton could sufficiently conquer the very painful feelings which her niece's conduct and her own compelled severity excited, to enter into her daughters' amusements; but she would not punish them for the misconduct of another; and, by her exertions, temper to Caroline and cheerfulness to Emmeline (whose tears of sympathy had almost kept pace with Ellen's of sorrow), gradually returned, and their book became as delightful a recreation as it had been before.
Great was Edward's grief and consternation when he found the effects of what was actually in the first instance his fault; but he had not sufficient boldness to say so. His aunt had expressly said it was the untruth that had occasioned her greatest displeasure, that if the disobedience had been confessed at once, she would, in consideration of the season, have forgiven it with a very slight rebuke. "Now," he thought, "it is only the disobedience in which I am concerned, and if I confess it was mostly my fault, it won't help Ellen in the least—so what is the use of my acknowledging it? Of course, if she wishes it, I will; but how could she tell such a deliberate story?"
That he was acting one of equal deliberation, and of far more culpability, if possible—for he was permitting her to bear the whole weight of his fault—never struck him; if it did, he did not at all understand or believe it. He went to his sister, and offered to confess his share in her fault, and when—as he fully expected—she begged him not, that it could do her no good, and perhaps only get him punished too, his conscience was so perfectly satisfied, that he actually took upon himself to ask her how she could be so foolish and wrong as, when she was asked, not to allow that she had moved it at once—
"It would have been all right, then," he said; and added, almost with irritation, "and I should not have been teased with the thought of your being in disgrace just now, when I wanted so much to enjoy myself."