“Miss Walton least of any,” I begged.
“Why don’t you insist, too, that Mrs. Blodgett, who intends that I shall inform her nightly of everything I know, sha’n’t be told?” he queried.
“It grieves me to be a marplot of connubial confidences,” I rejoined, responding to his smile, “but this must be between us.”
“Have your own way,” he acceded, and then laughed. “I’ll have a good time over it, for I’ll let Mrs. Blodgett see there is a secret, and she’ll go crazy trying to worm it out of me.”
He shook my hand again, and I felt ashamed to think that his voice and manner had once made me hold him in contempt.
I went back to the hotel, and thought over the past, seeing how blind I had been. Now for the first time everything became clear. I understood the trip to Europe and our remaining there, why my mother had left us, why Mr. Walton had been permitted to take you from us without protest, why we had not mingled with Americans, and my father’s motives in making me write under a pen name, in registering me at hotels by it, and in giving that name to your servant. Now it was obvious why he never signed his articles, and why he appealed to me to let him aid me to make a reputation: it was his endeavor to atone to me for the wrong he had done.
Good-night, my love.
IX
February 28. Many times in the last three years I have begun a letter to you, for the thought that you, like the rest of the world, may rank my father with other embezzlers stings me almost to desperation. Each time it has been to tear the attempted justification—or I should say, extenuation—into fragments, long before it was completed. In all my trials I have come to realize that nothing I can say can stand him in stead; for whatever I urge is open to suspicion, not merely because it is my interest to condone his act, but still more because it inevitably becomes an indirect justification of myself, and therefore, in a sense, a plea for pardon.