"There will be always speculation," implored the girl. "It will follow me wherever I go, and all my life I shall be in bondage to this wretched lie. Take back the money, uncle, and give me the price I paid for it,—my freedom, myself as I was before I was tempted!"
"Ah, if that could be!" said the old gentleman. "Is it my poor boy's memory that burdens you so? Is it that which you would be freed from?"
"From doing false homage to his memory," Daphne pleaded. "I could have grieved for him, if I could have been honest; as it is, I am in danger almost of hating him. Forgive me, uncle, but I am! How do you suppose I feel when voices are lowered and eyes cast down, not to intrude upon my 'peculiar, privileged grief? 'Here I and Sorrow sit!' Isn't it awful, uncle? Isn't it ghastly, indecent? I am afraid some day I shall break out and do some dreadful thing,—laugh or say something shocking, when they try to spare my feelings. Feelings! when my heart is as hard, this moment, to everything but myself, myself! I am so sick of myself! But how can I help thinking about myself when I can never for one moment be myself?"
"This is something that goes deeper," said Mr. Withers. "I confess it is difficult for me to follow you here; to understand how a love as meek as that of the dead, who ask nothing, could lay such deadly weights upon a young girl's life."
"Not his love—mine, mine! Is it truly in his grave? If it is not, why do I dare to profess daily that it is, to go on lying every day? I want back my word, that I never gave to any man. Can't one repent and confess a falsehood? And do you call it confessing, when all but one person in the world are still deceived?"
"It is not easy for me to advise you, Daphne," said Mr. Withers wearily. "Your struggle has discovered to me a weakness of my own: verily, an old man's fond jealousy for the memory of his son. Almost I could stoop to entreat you. I do entreat you! So long as we defraud no one else, so long as there is no living person who might justly claim to know your heart, why rob my poor boy's grave of the grace your love bestows, even the semblance that it was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute, we will say," the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rude hand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessary harshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresisting dead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Fling away even his memory, that casts so thin a shade upon your life, a faint morning shadow that will shrink as your sun climbs higher. By degrees you will be free. And, speaking less selfishly, would there not be a certain indelicacy in reopening now the question of your past relations to one whose name is very seldom spoken? Others may not be thinking so much of your loss—your supposed loss," the old gentleman conscientiously supplied—"as your sensitiveness leads you to imagine. But you will give occasion for thinking and for talking if you tear open now your girlhood's secrets. Whom does it concern, my dear, to know where or how your heart is bestowed?"
Daphne's cheeks and brow were burning hot; even her little ears were scarlet. Her eyes filled and drooped. "It is only right," she owned. "It is my natural punishment."
"No, no; I would not punish nor judge you. I love you too well. But I know better than you can what a safeguard this will be,—this disguise which is no longer a deception, since the one it was meant to deceive knows all and forgives it. It will rebuke the bold and hasty pretenders to a treasure you cannot safely part with, even by your own gift, as yet. You are still very young in some ways, my dear."
"I am old enough," said Daphne, "to have learned one fearful lesson."
"Do I oppress you with my view? Do I insist too much?"