There came still another burden of sorrow when she imparted the whole truth to her husband.
He listened with a brooding face, only the unusual glitter in his eyes showing how it stirred him. Then, after a long silence, while he appeared to be turning the matter in his mind, he exclaimed, not angrily, but with nothing showing in his voice save bitter self-reproach: "Blind fool that I've been, seeking to keep my little sister a child in thought. And right here, under my very eyes, has she become a woman, both in love and suffering!"
He sprang to his feet and began to pace back and forth, his wife watching him with troubled eyes. Presently he came and looked down into her face.
His own was pale, but it had a set, determined expression, as though the struggle were over, and he had turned his back upon all the hopes he had builded for his beloved sister,—upon what might have been, but now never to be.
"Sweetheart," he said, "there is one other we are bound in honor to take into our confidence, to tell all we know of this sad matter, and that is Hugh Knollys. He is not like to return here this many a day; still it is possible he may, or that I may be sent to the neighborhood of Boston before the summer comes. But whichever way I see him, I shall have to tell him the truth. Poor old Hugh!"
"Why, John!" But Mary's eyes filled with a look bespeaking full knowledge of what he was to say, although she had never suspected it until now.
He told her of all that passed between Hugh and himself that night, so many months ago. And when he finished, she could only sigh, and repeat his own words, "Poor Hugh!"
"Aye, poor Hugh, indeed, for I know the boy's heart well. It will be a dreadful thing for him to face, and with his hands tied, as are my own, against doing aught to the Britisher because his welfare matters so much to Dot."
Then he added almost impatiently: "I wish the child would let me talk with her. She must, before I go away, else I'll speak without her consent. So long as we are situated as now, it may do no harm to let the matter drift along; but if I have to leave home—"
"Oh, Jack, don't speak of such a thing," Mary interrupted. And rising quickly, she laid her hand on his shoulder as though to hold him fast.