"My child," said the old captain, "you may trust her and me. Whatever it is, it is safe with her and me."
Mrs. Morgan was sitting at the window in her summer place; her placid brow had a cloud upon it, but was not agitated like her husband's.
"Have you come back to us, Hester?" she said. "We thought we had lost you. If you can satisfy his mind with anything you can say, do it, my dear."
"What can I say?" Hester cried. "We are all in great trouble. I don't know which is the greatest, but I cannot tell you secrets that are not mine. Dear Mrs. Morgan, tell the captain so. Whatever I know it is by accident. I think I shall die with anxiety and suspense, but there is nothing I can say."
"My dear, you will not die, you will live to be anxious many another day. Rowley, my old man, you hear the child. We must not ask her another question. Wait, as you have waited many a time before. It is all in the Lord's hands."
The old man was wiping the moisture from his forehead: he had seated himself as soon as he came in, his old limbs were shaking under him. His large, colourless hands shook, holding his handkerchief.
"Mary," he said, "if it is my flesh and blood that has brought this disturbance into the place, that has seduced her boy, and brought down ruin on her house, how am I ever to lift my head again?"
The old lady looked at him with pathetic eyes, in which there was a suffering as acute as his own, softened and made almost bright by the patience and calm that were habitual to her.
"Rowley, we are not thinking of Catherine, we are thinking of ourselves," she said.