"Good gracious, Martin!" he cried, "what accursed folly! What need was there to tell her of any little peccadillo, if you could conceal it? Why did you not come to me for advice? Julia is a prude, like your mother. It will not be easy for her to overlook this."
"There is nothing to overlook," I said. "As soon as I knew my own mind, I told her honestly about it."
At that moment it did not occur to me that my honesty was due to Johanna's insistent advice. I believed just then that I had acted from the impulse of my own sense of honor, and the belief gave my words and tone more spirit than they would have had otherwise. My father's face grew paler and graver as he listened; he looked older, by ten years, than he had done an hour ago in the dining-room.
"I don't understand it," he muttered; "do you mean that this is a serious thing? Are you in love with some girl of our own class? Not a mere passing fancy, that no one would think seriously of for an instant? Just a trifling faux pas, that it is no use telling women about, eh? I could make allowance for that, Martin, and get Julia to do the same. Come, it cannot be any thing more."
I did not reply to him. Here we had come, he and I, to the very barrier that had been growing up between us ever since I had first discovered my mother's secret and wasting grief. He was on one side of it and I on the other—a wall of separation which neither of us could leap over.
"Why don't you speak, Martin?" he asked, testily.
"Because I hate the subject," I answered. "When I told Julia I loved another woman, I meant that some one else occupied that place in my affection which belonged rightfully to my wife; and so Julia understood it."
"Then," he cried with a gesture of despair, "I am a ruined man!"
His consternation and dismay were so real that they startled me; yet, knowing what a consummate actor he was, I restrained both my fear and my sympathy, and waited for him to enlighten me further. He sat with his head bowed, and his hands hanging down, in an attitude of profound despondency, so different from his usual jaunty air, that every moment increased my anxiety.
"What can it have to do with you?" I asked, after a long pause.