How It All Came Round

by L. T. Meade

Miss Harman was silent for a moment or two, then she said slowly, but with growing passion in her voice, "Ah! you are thinking of that wretched money. I thought love ranked higher than gold all the world over."

"So it does, or appears to do, for those who all their lives have had plenty; but it is just possible, just possible, I say, that those who are poor, poor enough to know what hunger and cold mean, and have seen their dearest wanting the comforts that money can buy, it is possible that such people may prefer their money rights to the profession of empty love."

"Empty love!" repeated Miss Harman. The words stung her. She was growing angry, and the anger became this stately creature well. With cheeks and eyes both glowing she turned to her companion. "If you and I are not to part at once, and never meet again, there must be very plain words between us. Shall I speak those words?" she asked.

"I came here that our words might be very plain," answered Mrs. Home.

"They shall be," said Charlotte Harman.

They were in a very quiet part of the park. Even the nurses and children were out of sight. Now they ceased walking, and turned and faced each other.

They were both tall, and both the poor and the rich young woman had considerable dignity of bearing; but Charlotte Home was now the composed one. Charlotte Harman felt herself quivering with suppressed anger. Injustice was being dealt out to her, and injustice to the child of affluence and luxury was a new sensation.

"You came to me the other day," she began, "I had never seen you before, never before in all my life ever heard your name. You, however, knew me, and you told me a story. It was a painful and very strange story. It made you not only my very nearest kin, but also made you the victim of a great wrong. The wrong was a large one, and the victim was to be pitied; but the sting of it all lay, to me, not in either of the facts, but in this, that you gave me to understand that he who had dealt you such a blow was—my father. My father, one of the most noble, upright, and righteous of men, you made out to me, to me, his only child, to be no better than a common thief. I did not turn you from my doors for your base words. I pitied you. In spite of myself I liked you; in spite of myself I believed you. You went away, and in the agony of mind which followed during the next few hours I could have gladly fled for ever from the sight of all the wide world. I had been the very happiest of women. You came. You went. I was one of the most miserable. I am engaged to be married, and the man I am engaged to came into the room. I felt guilty before him. I could not raise my eyes to his, for, again I tell you, I believed your tale, and my father's bitter shame was mine. I could not rest. Happen what would I must learn the truth at once. I have an uncle, my father's brother; he must know all. I sent my lover away and went to this uncle. I asked to have an interview with him, and in that interview I told him all you had told to me. He was not surprised. He acknowledged at once the true and real relationship between us; but he also explained away the base doubts you had put into my head. My father, my own beloved father, is all, and more than all, I have ever thought him. He would scorn to be unjust, to rob any one. You have been unfortunate; you have been treated cruelly; but the injustice, the cruelty have been penetrated by one long years now in his grave. In short, your father has been the wicked man, not mine."

Here Mrs. Home tried to speak, but Miss Harman held up her hand.

"You must hear me out," she said. "I am convinced, but I do not expect you to be. After my uncle had done speaking, and I had time to realize all the relief those words of his had given me, I said, still an injustice has been done. We have no right to our wealth while she suffers from such poverty. Be my grandfather's will what it may, we must alter it. We must so act as if he had left money to his youngest child. My uncle agreed with me; perhaps not so fully as I could wish, still he did agree; but he made one proviso. My father is ill, I fear. I fear he is very ill. The one dark cloud hanging over his whole life lay in those years when he was estranged from his own father. To speak of you I must bring back those years to his memory. Any excitement is bad for him now. My uncle said, 'Wait until your father is better, then we will do something for Mrs. Home.' To this I agreed. Was I very unreasonable to agree to this delay for my father's sake?"