Miss Jillgall was present. The gentle-hearted old maid was so touched by our meeting that she abandoned herself to the genial impulse of the moment, and gave Philip a kiss. The outraged claims of propriety instantly seized on her. She blushed as if the long-lost days of her girlhood had been found again, and ran out of the room.
“Now, Mr. Philip,” I said, “I have been waiting, at Miss Jillgall’s suggestion, to get my information from you. There is something wrong between Eunice and yourself. What is it? And who is to blame?”
“Her vile sister is to blame,” he answered. “That reptile was determined to sting us. And she has done it!” he cried, starting to his feet, and walking up and down the room, urged into action by his own unendurable sense of wrong. “I say, she has done it, after Eunice has saved me—done it, when Eunice was ready to be my wife.”
“How has she done it?”
Between grief and indignation his reply was involved in a confusion of vehemently-spoken words, which I shall not attempt to reproduce. Eunice had reminded him that her sister had been publicly convicted of an infamous crime, and publicly punished for it by imprisonment. “If I consent to marry you,” she said, “I stain you with my disgrace; that shall never be.” With this resolution, she had left him. “I have tried to convince her,” Philip said, “that she will not be associated with her sister’s disgrace when she bears my name; I have promised to take her far away from England, among people who have never even heard of her sister. Miss Jillgall has used her influence to help me. All in vain! There is no hope for us but in you. I am not thinking selfishly only of myself. She tries to conceal it—but, oh, she is broken-hearted! Ask the farmer’s wife, if you don’t believe me. Judge for yourself, sir. Go—for God’s sake, go to the farm.”
I made him sit down and compose himself.
“You may depend on my going to the farm,” I answered. “I shall write to Eunice to-day, and follow my letter to-morrow.” He tried to thank me; but I would not allow it. “Before I consent to accept the expression of your gratitude,” I said, “I must know a little more of you than I know now. This is only the second occasion on which we have met. Let us look back a little, Mr. Philip Dunboyne. You were Eunice’s affianced husband; and you broke faith with her. That was a rascally action. How do you defend it?”
His head sank. “I am ashamed to defend it,” he answered.
I pressed him without mercy. “You own yourself,” I said, “that it was a rascally action?”
“Use stronger language against me, even than that, sir—I deserve it.”