‘But you must have some reason for not liking him?’
‘Yes; I have the best of reasons, father. In the first place, you know very little about him, or you could not speak so highly of him as you do. He is a man of doubtful character, as you may find out by asking any one in Saint Quinians. In the second place, I—I don’t love him, and could never get to love him, or even like him. And in the third place’——
‘Well, lass, well?’
‘In the third place, I am betrothed to another.’
‘Betrothed to another!’ exclaimed her father in amazement. ‘Why, that is impossible! You never see any one; no one ever comes here; and I cannot believe that all this time you have been deceiving me by carrying on a secret acquaintance, when you have so often protested that you live for me, and me only.’
‘I have never dared tell you, father,’ cried the girl. ‘But it is a weight off my mind, now that you know. And, father, remember that I am not a child, and that, fond as I am of you and the old home, I could not go through life without some love of another kind than that I feel for you.’
Bertha had never spoken to her father in this style before, and the old man looked at her with mingled astonishment and reproach. Then he said: ‘Bertha, I have particular reasons for wishing you to marry Jasper Rodley: I am in his power.’
The girl recalled what Rodley had said to her on the previous Wednesday, and knew now that there was a mystery in which her father and Rodley were involved, a mystery which instinctively filled her with dread that, during all these years of peace and quiet, something had been enacted between them which had been carefully kept from her, and that the interview of the previous evening was but the climax of a long-gathering storm. Many little changes in her father’s manner and habits during the past four years had mystified her; now they were partially accounted for, and yet, to her recollection, she had never seen Jasper Rodley before the present month.
‘In his power, father!’ she exclaimed. ‘How can you be in his power?’
‘That I cannot even tell you, my loved one.’