Spears gave a little laugh, elevating his eyebrows. Yes, this was the sort of thing to be expected. She had led him on to it, and now she protested that she had nothing to do with it—was not this the kind of tactics pursued by her class in all ages? To push the frank and honest man of the people into a corner and then to disown him. He laughed, though he had not much inclination to laugh.
“Quite right, quite true,” he said; “it is for my own satisfaction entirely. Janet, nobody has ever come between you and me,” the man added with a certain pathos. He looked at his daughter with a mist of honest affection and trust in his eyes, and without an idea, without a suspicion, that between him and her lay a whole world of difference, indescribable by ordinary words. “I have been father and mother both to you. Answer me, my girl, without any fear. Mr. Markham has told his family that he is going with us to Queensland. Janet, answer me plainly, is it out of love for you?”
“Father!” Janet, whose face was turned towards him, gave a sudden cry. In a moment a flame of colour went over her. She opened her eyes still wider, and her mouth, with dismay. “Oh, father! father!” she cried, in a tone of warning and alarm.
It seemed to Lady Markham that nothing more was necessary. Her limbs refused to support her any longer. She sank upon the seat which she had abandoned. The girl was afraid to speak the truth before her; but yet what doubt could there be of the meaning in her voice.
“I ask you to tell me plainly—to speak out as between you and me,” said Spears. He was not slow to perceive what her tone implied, and the warning in it made him angry. “There is no reason why you should hesitate to say it. If so it is, there is nothing wrong in it as far as I can see. Blush you must, I suppose—girls cannot help it; but tell me, like an innocent creature as you are, tell me the truth. I tell you there is nothing to be ashamed of. Is it out of love for you?”
Her thoughts rushed, tumbling over each other in a wild dance, a feverish Bacchic procession, through Janet’s head. She did not mean to say, or even to imply what was not true. But such questioning could only mean one thing, that Mr. Markham had confessed to his mother that he was “in love” for her—that unthought-of, bewildering promotion was within her reach. She did not mean to tell a lie. She blushed more hotly than ever.
“Oh, father, how can you ask me such a thing—before a lady?” she said.
“Then it is true?”
Janet did not make any reply; she dropped her head with a modest grace, twisting her fingers together nervously, her whole frame quivering. It was not she that had told them anything: they had told her. Ah! she remembered now a score of little nothings. Had not he picked up her thimble for her when she let it fall? Had not he opened the door for her when she came and went? How often she had wondered how he could come night after night and day after day—for what?—to talk to father, to listen to father! Many and many a time she had wondered at, and in her heart despised, her father’s disciples. It was “bosh” that he was saying, and yet these others would sit round him and take it all in. But here was something altogether different. That a young man should only have pretended to listen to father, should have come for herself all the time, was quite comprehensible to Janet. There was nothing strange even—nothing out of the way in it. It was what lovers had done from the beginning of time.
“Is that all you have got to say?” said her father. “Can’t you give us any more satisfaction? Speak out when I tell you, Janet. All this time that he has been coming here, not saying a word to you, pretending to be my disciple—” A little sting of wounded vanity was in Spears too. He did not quite like to feel that he had been deceived, that his most fervent follower was nothing but the lover of his daughter. “All this time,” he repeated, “has it been for you he has been coming? That is what we want to know.”