“Tell me first if it’s true, Clary. I know it is, but I’d like to hear it from your own lips.”
“Yes, mother, it’s true,” said Clara slowly. “Now I want to know what you mean to do.”
“I must know all the reasons,” said the old woman.
“I am not at liberty to give you the reasons.”
“But, Clary, my girl, you’ve done an awful thing—something that will bring you under the power of the law. Am I to stand the disgrace of having one of my own locked up in one of her Majesty’s prisons and going through penal servitude, and being spoke of in all the papers? I’m poor, but I’m honest, and I has a respectable name, and this thing will kill me, that’s what it will.”
“Well, mother, if you keep the secret the catastrophe you dread will never happen,” said Clara. “You have only to keep it faithfully, and all will be well.”
“That’s very fine,” said the little woman; “but the secret worries me. Why should the boy be cut out of his own?”
“It is absolutely necessary that for the present he must remain unknown to his relatives,” said Clara. “It is a deep and a dreadful plot, mother, but it is too late to go back now. I may as well confess that I am bitterly sorry I ever took part in it.”
“It’s worse than a plot—it’s a black crime,” said the little woman. “Why, there’s the mother of the boy mourning him as if he were dead, and there was the old housekeeper crying fit to break her heart, and the young lady who has come in for all the money, she looked as sad as sad could be when she spoke of him, and they’re putting up a tablet to him in the old church. Clary, it’s past bearing. ’Tain’t likely as I’ll keep it burdening my soul. Even for you I can’t do that.”
“You’ll do great and terrible mischief if you let out what you know,” said Clara.