"I deserve it all. No wonder you will never forgive me." Penelope smiled--a very mournful smile. "At your old habit of jumping at conclusions! Indeed, I have forgiven you long ago. Perhaps, had I been less faulty myself, I might have had more influence over you. But all was as it was to be, I suppose and it is over now. Do not let us revive it." She sighed, and sat silent for a few moments, looking absently across the moorland; then with a sort of wistful tenderness--the tenderness which, one clearly saw, for ever prevents and excludes love--on Francis. "I know not how it is, Francis, but you seem to me Francis no longer--quite another person. I cannot tell how the love has gone, but it is gone; as completely as if it had never existed. Sometimes I was afraid if I saw you it might come back again; but I have seen you, and it is not there. It never can return again any more." "And so, from henceforth, I am no more to you than any stranger in the street?" "I did not say that--it would not be true. Nothing you do, will ever be indifferent to me. If you do wrong--oh, Francis, it hurts me so! it will hurt me to the day of my death. I care little for your being very prosperous, or very happy, possibly no one is happy; but I want you to be good. We were young together, and I was very proud of you:--let me be proud of you again as we grow old." "And yet you will not marry me?" "No, for I do not love you; and never could again, no more than I could love another woman's husband. Francis," speaking almost in a whisper; "you know as well as I do, that there is one person and only one, whom you ought to marry." He shrank back, and for the second time--the first being when I found him with his boy in his arms--Francis turned scarlet with honest shame. "Is it you--is it Penelope Johnston who can say this?" "It is Penelope Johnston." "And you say it to me?" "To you." "You think it would be right?" "I do." There were long pauses between each of these questions, but my sister's answers were unhesitating. The grave decision of them seemed to smite home--home to the very heart of Francis Charteris. When his confusion and surprise abated, he stood with eyes cast down, deeply pondering. "Poor little soul!" he muttered. "So fond of me, too--fond and faithful. She would be faithful to me to the end of my days." "I believe she would," answered Penelope. Here arose a piteous outcry of "Daddy, Daddy!" and little Franky, bursting from the cottage, came and threw himself in a perfect paroxysm of joy upon his father. Then I understood clearly how a good and religious woman like our Penelope could not possibly have continued loving, or thought of marrying, Francis Charteris, any more than if, as she said, he had been another woman's husband. "Dora, pray don't take the child away. Let him remain with his father."