"My dear, if you would but endeavour to be a little less prolix!" said Mrs. Sudlow. "If you cannot see that Fanny is dying of impatience, I can."
The Vicar hemmed and fidgeted in his chair.
"Really, my love," he murmured deprecatingly. Then turning to Fanny and addressing himself directly to her, he said: "I am afraid, my child, that what I am about to tell you will distress you greatly, but unfortunately the blow is one which there are no means of averting. The reason Philip Winslade wished to see me this morning was that he might impart to me, in strict confidence, a certain circumstance connected with his personal history which only came to his own knowledge a few days ago. It appears that when Mrs. Winslade became aware of the existence of some sort of an engagement between her son and you, and was told he was about to seek your parents' sanction thereto, she revealed to him the circumstance in question, which had hitherto been kept carefully from him. What she had to tell him was that her husband and his father was a certain notorious bank-note forger, Philip Cordery by name, who was tried and convicted upwards of twenty years ago, and who died in prison a little while afterwards."
"Ah!" was the sole comment vouchsafed by Mrs. Sudlow; but although a word of two letters only, it can be made to convey a variety of meanings, and on the present occasion what it conveyed to the Vicar was, "I always felt sure that there was something discreditable in that woman's past, and now you see how right I was."
Fanny's cheek had turned a shade paler, but as yet she scarcely realised the full significance of her father's news. After the silence had lasted a few moments she said, "But why, after keeping the fact a secret for so many years, should Mrs. Winslade have thought it needful to speak of it now?"
"Whatever may have been her trials and misfortunes, Mrs. Winslade is a high-principled woman," replied the Vicar. "When informed that her son was seeking to become engaged to a certain young lady, she revealed to him the story of his parentage as a measure of simple right both to the person in question and her parents. It would rest with them to accept or dismiss him as they might deem best, when the truth about him had been told; but in any case Mrs. Winslade was determined that there should be no risk of accepting him blindfold and under a cloak of false pretence."
"It seems to me," said Fanny, with a little glow of colour, "that it was a very magnanimous thing of Mrs. Winslade to do."
"You talk like a school-girl," broke in Mrs. Sudlow. "For very shame the woman could not do otherwise than as she did."
"On that point, my dear, I must venture to differ from you," remarked her husband in his blandest accents. "I fully believe there are many women who would have continued to keep silence in the future as they had in the past rather than run the risk of spoiling their son's chance of marrying into a reputable family. Such persons might not unreasonably allege that the fact of their having been able to keep their secret for so long a time might be taken as a strong argument that they would be able to keep it for ever." Then, a moment later, he added: "Poor young fellow! I felt truly sorry for him. There was a touch of manly pathos in the way he told his tale, which affected me more than anything it has been my lot to listen to for a very long time."
"It is an extremely disagreeable episode well ended," remarked Mrs. Sudlow with an air of satisfaction, as her sharp teeth bit in two the thread she was sewing. "Of course, you gave the young man his congé there and then?"