"We had best be going," I said, rising.
To my consternation she rose, too, and began to move off carelessly, as though she expected me to follow her to the hotel to see Rufus Blight and then to bid her a casual farewell. I did not follow. Indifferent she might be, but my mind was made up that she should hear me. There was no longer any gulf between us. There was only the barrier of cool indifference which she had raised, and I would fight to break it down.
"Penelope," I said, "there are other things that you and I must speak of before we go."
"What?" she asked, looking back over her shoulder.
"Of your father," I answered, stepping to the wall and leaning on it.
I think that she saw reproof in my eyes. She hesitated, stirring the sand with her parasol, and then came to the wall beside me.
"Is there anything that I do not know of him?" she asked, as she stood with her chin in her hands, looking over the plain. "You wrote so fully—to my uncle. You might have written to me, David—but still you wrote to my uncle." There was no hard note in Penelope's voice. "You cared for him, David, and he died in your arms. It was for that I forgave you—everything."
"Everything? What do you mean by everything?"
"There are some things that you will never understand."
"But you speak as though I had done much that needed forgiveness."