“What is it, daddy, dear?”
“Betty,”––he spoke sternly, as she had never heard him before,––“have you been concealing something from your father and mother––and from the world––for the last three years and a half?”
Her head drooped, the red left her cheeks, and she turned white to the lips. She drew away from her father and clasped her hands in her lap, tightly. She was praying 382 for strength to tell the truth. Ah, could she do it? Could she do it! And perhaps cause Richard’s condemnation? Had they found him?––that father should ask such a question now, after so long a time?
“Why do you ask me such a question, father?”
“Tell me the truth, child.”
“Father! I––I––can’t,” and her voice died away to a whisper.
“You can and you must, Betty.”
She rose and stood trembling before him with clinched hands. “What has happened? Tell me. It is not fair to ask me such a question unless you tell me why.” Then she dropped upon her knees and hid her face against his sleeve. “If you don’t tell me what has happened, I will never speak again. I will be dumb, even if they kill me.”
He put his arm tenderly about the trembling little form, and the act brought the tears and he thought her softened. He knew, as Mary had often said, that “Betty could not be driven, but might be led.”
“Tell father all about it, little daughter.” But she did not open her lips. He waited patiently, then asked again, kindly and persistently, “What have you been hiding, Betty?” but she only sobbed on. “Betty, if you do not tell me now and here, you will be taken into court and made to tell all you know before all the world! You will be proven to have been untrue to the man you were to marry and who loved you, and to have been shielding his murderer.”