She stopped, clasped her hands before her face, and then went on hurriedly. ‘One night, when Muriel was sitting by this hearth, with her brother in her arms, singing to him, she broke down suddenly, and began to sob hysterically. Her father was frightened out of his wits, and came fussing about her in a way to make her worse, but I put my arm round her and led her to her own room. When we were together there she flung herself upon my breast, and then the awful truth came out. A child was to be born in this house—a child whose birth must be hidden, whose father’s name was never to be spoken.’ ‘Did she tell you all the truth?’ ‘She told me nothing. There was a secret, she said—a secret she had solemnly sworn to keep, come what might. She asked me to trust her, to believe in her honour, in spite of all that seemed to condemn her. She asked me to send her away somewhere, to some quiet corner of the earth where no one need know her name or anything about her. But I told her there was no corner of the earth so secret that slander and shame would not follow her, and no hiding-place so safe as her father’s house. “If you were to go away it would set people talking,” I said.’ ‘There may have been a secret marriage,’ suggested Maurice. ‘I asked her that question, but she refused to answer. I cannot believe that she would have kept back the truth from me, her mother, in that hour of agony. I asked her if George Penwyn was the villain who had brought this misery upon us, but this question also she refused to answer. She had made a promise that sealed her lips, she said. I must think the worst of her, if I could not trust her.’ ‘Would it not have been better and wiser to believe in your daughter’s honour, even in the face of circumstances that seemed to condemn?’ asked Maurice, with a touch of reproach. ‘Who can be wise when they see all they have most loved and honoured suddenly snatched away from them? The discovery of my daughter’s dishonour was more bitter to me than her sudden death would have been. When I left her that night my prayer was that she might die, and her sorrow and her blighted name go down unknown to the grave. A wicked prayer, you think, no doubt; but you have never passed through such an agony as I felt that night. I lay awake thinking what was to be done. I had no doubt in my own mind that George Penwyn was the man who had slain my daughter’s soul. There was no one else I could suspect. When I rose at daybreak next morning I had my plan, in some measure, settled.’ Maurice listened breathlessly; he felt that he was on the threshold of the household mystery—the sacrifice that had been made to the family’s good name.