"You have weighed the consequences of this step, I presume? you understand what you are doing?" The mother spoke in a quiet, argumentative tone, as if discussing the cut of a gown or the color of a bonnet.
"I will break off the marriage," said Clementina, softly, a wave of tenderness and sorrow passing visibly over her.
"Oh! as for that," said her mother, indifferently, "that is the least thing! quite the least! I shall be sorry, of course, for your disappointment, for all the gossip and scandal it will give rise to—because I hate to be talked about—and for poor Sir James, who is, I know, sincerely attached to you. But let all this pass. Trifles such as these are nothing compared to the deeper sorrows behind. You are, perhaps, aware that your brother is alive?" She looked up from her work, speaking with a forced calmness that almost strangled her.
"Alive!" cried Clementina, clasping her hands. "Oh, mamma, why have you never told me this?"
"I tell you now, then; he is alive, living in retirement, under another name, in a small village in the north of England; and if you bruit this terrible secret abroad—are you listening to me, Clementina?—he would be tried for his life, and hanged. You understand that word, do you not? Hanged! The trial would not last long," she added, with a bitter little laugh; your good work would not flourish for many days before the eyes of the world; for a very few words would weave the chain of evidence, and then your pride and self-will would be satisfied."
"Mamma! why do you say such terrible things to me!" burst out Clementina. "You have never loved me, I know, but you have no right to speak to me like this?"
"Stop, Clementina," said her mother, sternly, "and do not blame me for your own faults. If I have lived with you coldly, it has been your doing, not mine—it is your coldness that has checked all sympathy and confidence between us; I have at all times been willing to be loving; it is you that have repulsed me, and that have lived apart in a world of your own, which you would not allow even a mother to share."
"I kept no secrets from you, mamma!" cried Clementina.
"Was I wrong to guard the character and life of my son?" asked Mrs. Kinniside, sternly.
"You might have trusted me with the character and life of my brother," the girl answered.
"I might? for this result? that from some strained and absurd feeling of romantic openness you rush with it to a man, who, if you have learnt anything of his character at all, and do not know him only by sight and name, you must have seen cannot keep a secret For how long after Sir James Walshe knew of my poor boy's crime would the world remain in ignorance? For as long as it took the first-comer to walk across the road to meet him! Your conduct this morning, Clementina, justifies my reticence, and shows how utterly unfit you are to be in the possession of any fact which your own self-torturing, restless, casuistical brain could turn to evil!"
"Oh, mamma! why are you so harsh to me!" cried the poor girl; and then, flinging herself on her knees, she buried her face in her mother's lap and burst into a passion of tears.
"Now she is saved!" murmured Mrs. Kinniside, fetching a deep sigh as she leaned over the poor sobbing girl, soothing and caressing her, tears dropping from her own eyes the while. For Mrs. Kinniside, wily diplomatist though she was, had a heart which could be reached, if with difficulty.
