Elly got up at this amazed, and went and stood by him, and touched his arm with her hand. ‘Oh, Jack!’ she said, with a reproach which went to his heart.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘that is true. I said I would not hear of it; but that is very different from suddenly breaking it off on the man’s side, without a word.’
‘Oh, very, very different!’ cried Elly. ‘Aunt Mary, he never, never could intend to use me so.’
It was all a sort of sweet trifling to Elly, a sort of quarrel to be made up, though without any of the harshness of a quarrel—a little misunderstanding that could only end in one way.
And he stood leaning up against the wall facing them, with his sad knowledge in his heart, knowing that it was no trifle that stood between them, but a great gulf which neither could cross. He stood and gazed at them for a moment, his eyes and his heart and every member of him thrilling with insupportable pain.
‘I will tell you if you wish it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to tell you, but if I must, I must. I told you that I always believed my father to be dead. He was nothing but a vision to me. I remember him only as a child does. I believed he was dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Egerton, interested, but mildly, while Elly continued to look up, smiling into his face.
‘I remember, too,’ she said, ‘how he used to come in and take you out of bed.’
The unfortunate young man shuddered. It was so dreadful to think of this now, and to think that the cause of all his trouble remembered it too, as the one distinct thing when so much was blank. And to see the untroubled curiosity in their faces, so unexpectant of the thunderbolt which was about to fall!
‘The reason he has been out of sight so long is—that he has been in prison for forgery for fourteen years. He came out about a month since, and I found him the first night, but without knowing who he was. He is a convict, and has been in prison for fourteen years.’