'Worse for me? Is it possible that you can for one moment be thinking about the money? Can you suppose that my father's good name is not more to me than such'——
'Dear Lilian, I was not thinking about the money,' I slowly replied, with a miserable sickening of the heart as I suddenly realised that the property also was lost. She would be penniless as well as nameless. I glanced towards him again. No; there was no hope!
'Then how can it be worse for me? How can it possibly be worse for me that Papa did right instead of wrong. Please tell me at once what you mean.'
Alas! the more she dwelt upon the honour, the more she was shewing us how terribly she would feel the dishonour! My eyes appealed once more to him for help. But he gravely said: 'Miss Haddon knows what there is to tell, and it will come best from her.'
So it was left to me. I, who loved her most, had to strike the blow. I only put one last question to him: 'Is what I most feared realised, Mr Wentworth?'
He bowed his head in assent, and walked towards the window as I went on:
'Lilian, dear sister—you promised to let me call you that—there is something to be suffered; and though I know you will bear it more bravely than many would, it will be very hard to bear. In your anxiety to do justice to Marian, you did not perceive that—it might bring suffering upon yourself.'
'Doing justice need not bring suffering, Mary.'
'It sometimes may, Lilian. The reward of right doing is not always reaped at the moment.'
'You are not talking like yourself, Mary. What do you and I care about getting rewards! Please tell me at once what I have to bear. I know now that it is something bad; and I know that you are both very sorry for me.'