"Possibly not. But why distress her by making her the recipient of so painful a revelation?"
"She is your daughter, and she has a right to be told the truth."
"As you say, she is my daughter, and perhaps she has a right to be told. But seeing that her ignorance has lasted for twenty years, it cannot matter greatly if she be kept in the same ignorance for a few weeks or a few months longer. That ultimately everything will be told her, I do not doubt; but not now--not till--till----" Overcome by some hidden emotion, he faltered, and was dumb.
"Not till what, Ambrose?" said Miss Bellamy very gently.
"Not till I have proved my innocence to the world."
Miss Bellamy sighed, but said nothing. If Eleanor was not to be told her father's story till his innocence should be proved, then would it remain untold for ever.
"Do not think," resumed Ambrose Murray, "that I have not thought over, times without number, all that can be urged either for or against the telling of my story to Eleanor, but I have come to the conclusion that for a little while to come it had better remain untold."
"And do you think, Ambrose, that after such a length of time there is any chance, however remote, of your being able to prove your innocence?"
"I don't know: I cannot tell. I can simply hope. The world is full of apparent wonders, and Providence works out its ends in a way that we cannot fathom. I know how vain and futile must seem to you the prospect of my ever being able to prove my innocence; but it is for that purpose, and that alone, that I am now here. Had I not been sustained by such a hope, I believe that I should not have cared to seek my freedom. Years since, the desire for freedom, for freedom's own sake, burnt itself to a cinder in my heart by its very intensity. I came at last to cling to the narrow walls that had been my home for so long a time, as a limpet clings to its boulder on the beach, neither knowing nor caring for any horizon beyond its own few inches of rock and sand. How is it possible for me to make you comprehend what simple things may become dear to a man who has been cut off from the world as I have been? The pair of robins that I used to feed, the candy-tuft that grew outside my bedroom window, the head-warder's motherless child, the laurel-walk in the garden, my box of tools--the source of so many happy hours: it was not without a pang of bitter anguish that I cast these behind me for ever, even though freedom itself was beckoning to me from the hill-tops!
"But an inner voice seemed to urge me forward, a will superior to my own seemed to guide my footsteps. In saying this I may be merely the victim of self-delusion. My hopes and wishes in this matter may have no better foundation than a few incoherent dreams. Once already my mind has been like an empty room that is open to every wind that blows; and sometimes even now--Heaven help me!--I seem as if I had hardly strength enough to hold the door against the troop of demons that press and hustle to get in, and complain that I have dispossessed them of their home. But be this as it may, I am held and sustained by the hope of which I have spoken. It may prove to be nothing better than a broken reed, but till it is so proved, I will in no wise let it go: and till that time shall come, my daughter and I must remain to each other the strangers we have hitherto been."