All eyes were turned on Vivian Standish. He trembled violently. He looked up once, while they all stared him so suspiciously, and that look was directed towards Honor; he saw her clear grey eyes buried in his tell-tale face. He leaned against the tall back of a chair unsteadily, hesitated a moment, and then addressing Henry Rayne, said, in a husky and trembling voice,
"It would not avail me much to try my defence under these crushing circumstances, Mr Rayne, but at least I can have my say as well as the others. I admit that in years gone by, I was guilty of many things of which you did not suspect me, but a man is not supposed to disgrace himself for his whole life because he has at one time committed extravagant follies. I thought I had buried my past forever, or I should never have taken advantage of your hospitality as I have. Guilty as I was, I could not help being influenced by the fascination that bound me to your home—the resistless attractions of that girl," pointing to Honor. "I leave it now, disgraced, condemned, but at least, you, who are all so blameless, can consent not to crush me entirely. In administering justice, be a little kind, my misery is bitter enough—God knows!"
Then Fifine de Maistre stepped forward and laid her hand on the shoulder of the wretched man.
"Vivian Standish," she said, "you have wronged me, inasmuch as a man can wrong a woman; you have driven my good father to any early grave, and blighted every hope I had for the future, and though my heart lies shrivelled and dead where you have left it, I forgive you!"
At these words, the look of hard contempt in every eye, melted into one of glowing admiration; tears stood in Honor's eyes, though she had worn such a merciless expression before, and Vivian Standish as he raised his face from his trembling hands, looked calmer and more resigned, he turned his eyes on the slight figure standing beside him, and said in a nervous voice of emotion,
"May God bless you, Fifine, you can never regret these words."
Henry Rayne's feeble voice was the next to be heard.
"This strange, painful news," he said, "is a greater shock to me than anything else in the world that I could hear of. I have received you Standish, and treated you as an intimate friend of my family, and had you in return, confined your deceptions to myself, I might yet have forgiven you; but knowingly, to extend your treachery to that innocent and unsuspecting girl, aware, as you were that she was all in all to me, is a base ingratitude that living or dying, I will never forgive. What would she have become? blighted in hopes, ruined in prospects for life, and by my urgent request too, that, she would have been very soon, but for—you," he said, turning towards Guy, "you, my boy, have saved my heart from breaking, though I did not deserve it from you. I suppose it is too late to seek your forgiveness now after I have judged you so hastily, and punished you so severely, but God knows, I have repented of it many a time since."
His voice broke down, into a weak sob, and he bowed his head.
"You think too harshly of me, uncle dear," Guy said, advancing, "for I have long ago forgotten the past; the day I left your house I took my first step to good fortune, and I have never regretted your severity since, though it pained me much at the time. It has all blown happily over now, however, and I have tried in a measure to atone for the folly of my past, let us learn a lesson for the future from the misunderstanding, but in every other respect let us forget that it has ever occurred."