"Ah, my son, do not say that! Should I not have been a wretch to cast a blight over your young life one hour before I was absolutely compelled to do so? But you know, or, at least, you can guess, why I have at length broken the seal of silence which I imposed on myself so many years ago, and have told you this to-night."
"Yes, I think I know," he said with a sort of slow sadness. "After what I told you just now--that I had won the love of one of the dearest girls on earth--you felt that the time had come when I must walk blindfold no longer, when, at every risk, the bandage must be plucked from my eyes."
"The necessity was a hard one, but there seemed to me no help for it."
"None whatever. It will be a hard thing and a bitter to have to tell the Vicar on Monday morning."
"After all these years, is there no other way than that?"
"None that I can see. The understanding between Fanny and myself has gone so far that I could not withdraw from it honourably, even were I wishful of doing so. No, mother, there is nothing left me save to tell everything to the Vicar and leave him to decide the matter in whatever way may seem best to himself."
For a little while neither of them spoke.
Then Phil said: "Mr. Sudlow is an honourable man, no one more so, and I feel sure, and so must you, mother, that your secret--or ours, as I must now call it--will be as safe with him as though it were still unspoken."
Mrs. Winslade did not reply; only to herself she said: "My poor Phil, you forget that there is such a person as Mrs. Sudlow to be reckoned with."
Phil was bending forward, staring into the fire with gloomy eyes, his elbows resting on his knees, and his chin supported by his hands. "Of course it is too much, altogether too much to expect," he went on disconsolately, "however good and kind-hearted a man Mr. Sudlow may be and is, that he will ever consent to accept me in the light of a prospective son-in-law. No; he will insist on the engagement being at once broken off; and, under the circumstances, how can anyone blame him?"