“There are, as you know, women in this country who would not consider it a burden,” said the girl.
Godfrey Palliser stretched out his hand and pointed to the vista of sunlit valley which, framed by the dark fir branches, opened up before them. Green beech wood, springing wheat, and rich meadow rolled away into the blue distance under a sky of softest azure, with the river flashing in the midst of them. Across the valley, under its sheltering hill-slope the gray front of Northrop Hall showed through embowering trees, and the tower of a little time-worn church rose in the foreground. It was this, Violet Wayne noticed, the old man’s eyes rested longest on.
“It will all be yours and Tony’s from this bank of the river as far as the beech woods where Sir George’s land breaks in, and it is a burden I have found heavy enough these thirty years,” he said. “The debt was almost crushing when it came to me, and rents were going down, while one can look for very little from agricultural property. I did what I could, and thanks to the years of economy the load is a little lighter now; but once I betrayed the trust reposed in me, and failed in my duty.”
Violet Wayne could not quite hide her astonishment, for no shadow of reproach had ever touched the punctilious Godfrey Palliser. He smiled when he saw the incredulity in her eyes.
“It is quite true, and yet the temptation to deceive myself was almost irresistible,” he said. “For thirty years I had lived at Northrop with the good will of my tenants and my neighbors’ esteem, and if that counted for too much with me it was because I felt I held the honor of the name in trust to be passed on unblemished to you and Tony, and those who would come after you. That was why I yielded, and it is only because you will be Tony’s wife I make confession now.”
“You are cold,” said the girl hastily. “We will drive out into the sunshine.”
Godfrey Palliser nodded, but he turned to her again as the ponies went slowly down the hill. “It is necessary that you should listen, because the man may live to trouble you,” he said. “It never became apparent who killed Davidson—for killed he was—but Tony and I knew, though I strove to convince myself the man I should have exposed might be innocent. Bernard Appleby would not have escaped to America if I had done my duty. Had the warrant been signed when it should have been Stitt would have arrested him.”
“You cannot believe that Bernard Appleby was guilty!”
“I am sure, my dear. I would not admit it, but I knew it then—and still, perhaps, I had excuses. The man was of my own blood, and I had meant, when he had proved his right to it, to do something for him. Tony is generous, and would not have grudged what I purposed to spare for him. It was a crushing blow, and left me scarcely capable of thinking, while before I quite realized it the thing was done, and I had become an accessory to the escape of a criminal.”
He stopped, gasped a little, for he had spoken with a curious intensity of expression; but the girl looked at him steadily.