Part 33 (2/2)

”You haven't abandoned all thought of it. You're just a silly fool of a girl who won't take her father's advice. It is an insult to Ormsby to throw him over for a thieving rascal--”

”Father, you have always prided yourself on being a just man. Yet, you condemn d.i.c.k without a hearing.”

”Without a hearing! Haven't I given him a hearing? I saw him. He had the chance then to deny the charge. His crime is set out in black and white, and he can't get away from it. No doubt, he thinks he can talk over a silly woman, and sc.r.a.pe his way back to respectable society by marrying my daughter; but no--not if I know it! Marry d.i.c.k Swinton, and you go out of my house, never to return. I'll not be laughed at by my friends and pointed at as a man of loose principles, who allowed his daughter to mate with a blackguard.”

”Father, curb your tongue,” cried Dora, flas.h.i.+ng out angrily. Her color was rising, and that determined little mouth, which had excited the admiration of Herresford, was set in a hard, straight line. The colonel was red in the face, and emphasizing his words with his clenched fists, as if he were threatening to strike.

Dora was the first to recover her composure. She turned away with a shrug, and walked out of the room to put an end to the discussion.

Her joy at d.i.c.k's return from the grave was short-lived. The appalling difficulty of the situation was making itself felt. She left the colonel to ramp about the house, muttering, and shut herself in her boudoir, where she proceeded to make short work of everything a.s.sociated with Vivian Ormsby. His photograph was torn into little pieces; the gifts with which he had loaded her were collected together in a heap; his letters were burned without a sigh. She would have been sorry for him, if he had not conspired with her father to conceal the truth about d.i.c.k's supposed death. She shuddered to think what her position would have been, if she had married Ormsby, and then discovered, when the die was cast, that d.i.c.k, her idol, the only one who had touched a responsive chord in her heart, was living, and set aside by fraud.

The sc.r.a.pe into which d.i.c.k had got himself could not really be as serious as her father imagined, since the grandfather of the culprit had spoken of it so lightly--and, in any case, the crime of forgery never horrifies a woman as do the supposedly meaner crimes of other theft and of violence. It was surely something that could be put right, and, if it could not, then it would become a battle of heart against conscience.

But, at present, love held the field.

It was absolutely necessary to see d.i.c.k, and get information on all points; and, as it was quite impossible to extract information from her father as to her lover's whereabouts, the rectory seemed to be the most likely place to gather news. To the rectory, therefore, she went.

d.i.c.k was upstairs, ill. When her name was taken in to the clergyman--she chose the father in preference to the mother from an instinctive distrust of Mrs. Swinton which she could not explain--John Swinton trembled.

Cowardice suggested that he should avoid her questioning. He knew why she came; and was not prepared with the answer to the inevitable inquiry, ”Where is d.i.c.k?” Yet, anything that contributed to d.i.c.k's happiness at this miserable juncture was not to be neglected. Therefore, he received her.

Dora was shocked to see the change in the clergyman. His hand trembled when it met hers, and his eyes looked anywhere but into her face.

”Mr. Swinton, you can guess why I have come.”

”I think I know. You have heard the glad news--indeed, everyone seems to have heard it--that my son has been given back to me.”

”And to me, Mr. Swinton.”

”What! Then, you do not turn your back upon him, Miss Dundas!” he cried, with tears in his voice.

”I have come to you, Mr. Swinton, to find out where he is, that I may go to him, and hear from his own lips a denial of the atrocious charge brought against him by the bank.”

”Yes, yes, of course! I don't wonder that you find it hard to believe.”

The guilty rector fidgeted nervously, and covered his confusion by bringing forward a chair.

”I cannot stay, Mr. Swinton, thank you. I have just run down to beg you to put me in communication with your son. Oh, you can't think what it has meant to me. It has saved me from an unhappy marriage.”

”Your engagement to Mr. Ormsby is broken off?”

”Yes.”

”Because you think you'll be able to marry d.i.c.k?”

”Yes. Why do you speak of d.i.c.k like that?” she asked, with a sudden sinking at the heart. ”Surely, you do not join in the general condemnation--you, his own father! Oh, it isn't true what they told me--that he's a forger, who will have to answer to the law, and go to prison. It isn't true.”

”d.i.c.k himself is the only person who can answer your questions.”

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