“But how dare I say yes without sharing with Fairchild the secret of Miriam's origin? Without telling him the story of Louise Massarte?”
“Surely, you cannot purpose doing that! You cannot mean to confide to another knowledge affecting her which she herself is unaware of!”
“No, of course not. But there's just the rub. How, without doing that, how can I honourably permit him to make her his wife?”
“It is a choice of evils: to break their hearts or to suppress certain facts. You must choose the lesser evil of the two.”
“That is very easily said. But the trouble is to determine which of the two evils is the lesser. Deceit or cruelty?”
“Forgive me, my dear brother, for reminding you of it: but if you had listened to my warning in the first place, this painful alternative would never have come about.”
“What could I do? You yourself agreed with me that I couldn't forbid Fairchild the house. And so long as he had the run of the house, how could I prevent him and Miriam meeting? And meeting as frequently as they did, I suppose it was inevitable that they should come to love each other. There's no use reproaching me—no use regretting the past. What was bound to happen has happened. That's the whole truth of it.”
“I did not intend to reproach you, Leonard. I merely wished to say that, since, in a manner, you have been responsible for the state of things which has come to pass—since, in other words, you neglected to take such measures as would have prevented that state of things from coming to pass—it seems as if now you were under a sort of moral obligation not to stand between them and their happiness. The time for action was the outset. You did not act then. It seems as if you had thereby forfeited your right to act. Since you have allowed things to go so far, it seems as if you had no right to forbid their going farther.”
“That is to say, you counsel me to consent.”
“I do not see how you can do otherwise now. It is too late for you to step in and separate them.”