“Yes, yes; that is all. It is not much to ask you.”
“It is much more than you have any right to ask. You have chosen to connect my name dishonourably with a lady whom I esteem. Enough! I cannot control your actions, but I mean to regulate my own. Good morning, Edith. Since you have nothing more important to say to me, I suppose I am at liberty to go?”
He raised his hat and walked away, pausing a minute later to raise it again, and to address some pleasant remark to a member of his congregation, who happened at that moment to be coming along the road. It was the sight of this stranger which prevented Edith from following, which made her turn and walk with rapid steps towards her home. She felt cold and sick and heart-broken, and she shrank from the sight of any human face.
When she reached her home, she found her aunt, who had been surprised at her protracted absence, gazing uneasily up and down the road. The sight of the girl’s pale, tear-stained face alarmed her, but Edith silenced her inquiries by declaring that she had not been very well.
“It was foolish of me, but I could not help crying at the service,” she said. “Dear aunt, do not be anxious. I am better now, and only want rest.”
“Shall I send you up some dinner, darling?”
“No; nothing. I want to be alone—quite alone.”
So, with a weary, listless look upon her, the girl went up to her room, and, having locked the door, she threw herself upon the bed, and cried as if her heart were broken.
Meanwhile Mr. Santley went on his way, almost as much disturbed as Edith herself. He was angry, terribly angry; for if scenes similar to the one through which he had passed were allowed to continue, he anticipated a storm of troubles in the future. But how to avoid them? What would be the best and safest course to adopt? The good man was terribly perplexed. To openly defy the girl might cause her, in her bitterness and pain, to expose herself and him; which would certainly be awkward, since he wished, above all things, to stand well with his congregation. And yet to adopt any other course, he must at least pretend to subscribe to her conditions. He must be content to renounce, or pretend to renounce, his intimacy with Mrs. Haldane. The man of God was justly indignant.
Such a course, he knew, must not be thought of, and he resolved with pious determination to continue Ellen Haldane’s conversion, for which he was so zealous and to leave matters between himself and Edith exactly as they were.