“I cannot fully answer for Mary,” replied Mrs Oliphant; “but I should be wrong if I said anything that could lead you to suppose that she can ever again look upon you as she once did.”
“Is it really so?” he said gloomily. “Has this one transgression forfeited her love for ever? Is there no place for repentance? I do not justify myself. I do not attempt to make less of the fault. I can thoroughly understand her horror, her disgust. I loathe myself as a vile beast, and worse than a beast. But yet, can I by this one act have cut through every cord that bound her heart to mine?”
“Excuse me, dear Frank,” said the other; “but you mistake in speaking of one transgression—one act. It is because poor Mary feels, as I feel too, that this act must be only one of many acts of the like kind, though the rest may have been concealed from us, that she dare not trust her happiness in your keeping.”
“And who has any right,” he asked warmly, “to say that I am in the habit of exceeding?”
“Do you deny yourself that it is so?” she inquired, looking steadily but sorrowfully at him.
His eyes dropped before hers, and then he said,—
“I do not see that any one has a right to put such a question to me.”
“Not a right!” exclaimed Mrs Oliphant. “Have not I a right, dear Frank, as Mary’s mother, to put such a question? I know that I have no right to turn inquisitor as regards your conduct and actions in general. But oh, surely, when you know what has happened, when you remember your repeated promises, and how, alas! they have been broken; when you call to mind that Mary has expressly promised to me, and declared to you, that she will never marry a drunkard,—can you think that I, the mother whom God has appointed to guard the happiness of my darling daughter, have no right to ask you whether or no you are free from that habit which you cannot indulge in and at the same time honestly claim the hand of my beloved child?”
Frank for a long time made no answer; when he did reply, he still evaded the question.
“I have done wrong,” he said; “grievously wrong. I acknowledge it. I could ask Mary’s pardon for it on my knees, and humble myself in the dust before her. I might plead, in part excuse, or, at any rate, palliation of my fault, the heat of the weather and thirsty nature of the work I was engaged in, which led me into excess before I was aware of what I was doing. But I will not urge that. I will take every blame. I will throw myself entirely on her mercy; and surely human creatures should not be unmerciful since God is so merciful.”