I had met the girl before, of course—just for a moment, hardly long enough to take in more than a general view, "the old clergyman's pretty little daughter", if you understand me... Big grey eyes and a quantity of soft hair; a shy, appealing girl...
"Won't you leave us alone for a moment?," I said to Sir Appleton. Rather to my surprise he did have the consideration to oblige me in that. "Molly, my dear, won't you kiss me?," I said.
The poor little thing shrank from me...
"I'm so ashamed," she cried.
"My child, my child," I said, "you are overwrought. But we are going to send you right away, where you will forget all your troubles. All will be well. All would have been well from the beginning if you had trusted me and taken me into your confidence."
"I felt you'd think me so wicked!," sobbed the poor little thing.
I told her that I couldn't think her wicked without thinking the same of Will.
"Right and Wrong," I said, "existed from the beginning and will endure to the end, irrespective of conventions and institutions. I say to you what I should not dare say to your father: right and wrong are older than any marriage laws. You love my boy?"
"Oh, I do," she cried. "I never loved any one before and I could never love any one else."
"And he loves you," I said. "Need we say any more at present? I find it hard to spare him, but sooner or later this is a thing that comes to every mother. If I surrender him to you, will you in your turn take my place and devote yourself to him as I have tried to do? There is so little time and so many things to do that I cannot talk to you as I should like. Very soon you will be married, very soon you will both have slipped away to a very far country. Nothing that any of us can do for you both will be left undone; every penny that we can scrape together will be yours. As time goes on, you will learn how much money can do—and how little. All my life I have been scraping and pinching, pinching and scraping to provide for the happiness and comfort of my husband and son. You will have to do the same. Very few of us have enough for all we should like, and you will find that between husband and wife, when one has to yield, it is the wife who yields. That is the law of the Medes and Persians. Too often it is 'A suit for him or a frock for me'... Promise me that you will never let my boy go short of anything. He has been brought up to a certain standard of comfort, and I know by experience that, if you try to reduce that, it will be you who will suffer in the long run. That is part of the price that we pay for being women. And now," I said, "let me kiss my daughter."