"I cannot."
"Then I shall go to Mr. Copley for it."
"Oh no!" said Dolly, starting, and laying both her hands upon one of the young officer's, as if in pleading or in hindering. "Oh no, Mr. Shubrick! Please, please, do not speak to mother or father about this! Please say nothing about it!"
He kissed and clasped the hands, making, however, no promise. For a moment he paused, seeing that Dolly was very deeply disturbed.
"Do you think father and mother both could not be tempted to go home for your sake?" he then asked.
"Oh, mother, yes; but father—I don't know about father."
"I shall try my powers of persuasion," said Mr. Shubrick lightly.
Dolly made no answer and was evidently in so much troubled confusion of thought that she was not ready, even if he were, to take up again the consideration of plans and prospects, or to enter into any other more indifferent subject of conversation. After a trial or two, seeing this, Mr. Shubrick proposed to get a book and read to her; which he had once or twice done to their great mutual pleasure. And as Dolly eagerly welcomed the proposal, he left her there on the bank and went down to the cottage, which was not very far off, to fetch the book. As soon as he was out of sight, Dolly laid her face in her hands.
It was all rushing upon her now, what she had scarce looked at before in the pre-occupation and happiness of the last days. It was a confusion of difficult questions. Would her father leave the companions and habits to which he had grown so fast, and go back to America for her sake—that is, for the sake of seeing her promptly married? Dolly doubted it much. It was quite possible that her father would regard that consideration as the reverse of an inducement. It was quite possible that no unselfish inducement would have any power at all with him. Then he would stay in England. And so long as he was in England, in the clutches of the temptation that had got so much power, Dolly could not leave him; and if she could leave him, it would be impossible to forsake her mother, whose only stay and comfort on earth she was. In that case, what was she to say to Mr. Shubrick? How could he understand, that for Dolly to leave father and mother was any way different or more difficult than Christina's or any other girl's doing the same thing? He could not understand, unless she told him all; and how was it possible for her to do that? How could she tell her lover her father's shame? And if she simply refused to marry him and refused to give any reason, what was he to think then? Shame and fear and longing took such possession of Dolly that she was thrown into great perturbation. She left her seat on the bank and walked up and down under the great trees. A good burst of tears was near, but she would not give way to that; Sandie would see it. He would be back presently. And he would be putting his question again; and whatever in the world should she say to him? For the hundredth time the bitter apostrophe to her father rose in Dolly's heart. How could he have let her be ashamed of him? And then another thought darted into her head. Had not Mr. Shubrick a right to know all about it? Dolly was almost distracted with her confusion of difficulties.
She would not cry, which as she told herself would help nothing. She stood by a great oak branch which, leaving the parent trunk a few feet higher up, swept in lordly fashion, in a delicious curve, down towards the turf, with again a spring upward at its extremity. Dolly stood where it came lowest, and had rested her two arms upon it, looking out vaguely into the green wilderness beyond. She thought she was safe; that was not the side towards the cottage, from which quarter Mr. Shubrick would come; she would hear his steps in time before she turned round. But Mr. Shubrick had seen her standing there, and innocently made a little bend from the straight path so as to come up on one side and catch a stolen view of her sweet face. Coming so, he saw much more than he expected, and much more than Dolly would have let him see. The next moment he had taken the girl in his arms.