“Why? Nobody would know.”
Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her father.
She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were standing there.
“I don’t reproach you, Grace,” said her father, with an estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. “What has come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing. Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said.”
Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber. “Marty,” she said, quickly, “I cannot look my father in the face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him—what you have told me—what you saw—that he gave up his house to me.”
She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father if he had met her husband.
“Yes,” said Melbury.
“And you know all that has happened?”
“I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness—I ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your home?”
“No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more.”