“I should like a few words with you,” said the tutor, “if you can spare me the time. I wish to express my regret for having spoken last night. I ought not to have revealed the secret of my birth; but it was burning in my heart, and flamed out at my mouth.”
Arminell continued playing and said nothing.
“We must let the matter drop,” he said in a low tone, “I will not presume again, if you will endeavour to forget.”
“How can I forget? As well dash vitriol in my eyes, and say don’t allow them to smart.”
He saw that there were tears on her face.
“I am sincerely sorry,” he said, “I am heartily penitent. I see I have hurt you. My words were vitriol, and your eyes have overflowed.”
“Doubly do you hurt me now—in noticing what should have been left unobserved. I am crying over my dead respect for my father. I loved him in my own queer and wayward fashion, though there was little we had in common. I believed him to be upright and good, and now my faith is gone to pieces.”
“We must make allowances,” said Jingles. “This happened long ago—I am twenty-one—and Lord Lamerton was at the time young, under thirty. In token of his regret he has done much for me.”
“I have been accustomed,” said Arminell, “to look up to my father, and I have been full of a certain family pride—not pride in rank and wealth and all that sort of thing, but pride in the honour and integrity which I believed had been ours always; and now I find—” she sobbed; she could not finish her sentence.
“I am very sorry. I shall ever reproach myself,” was the impotent remark of Jingles, but he did feel a sting of self-reproach. He had acted cruelly to kill a girl’s trust in her father.