"Did she say that to you, Doris?" His voice was hoarse, he looked very pale. "She did." "And that caused you to send me that dreadful message?" he asked. "What message?" "That you would never, _never_ marry me." "Yes." "Ah! I understand it now." He passed his hand wearily across his brow--"I understand. But I can’t help it, and she is my mother!" Again he was silent, struggling to control himself. "Do you know," he said, "she turned me out of my home?" "She did? Why?" "Because I would not prosecute your father." "Ah! You have not attempted to prosecute him?" "Doris! Did you think that I _could_?" "Forgive me," she said. "But after your shrinking from me, as you did, when you heard what my father had done----" "Shrinking from you! Shrinking! Surely you did not think that I could ever have done that?" "But you did, Bernard. You did. It was that which broke my heart." "My darling, you must be mistaken!" "Indeed I am not. You shrank away from me. And then, your mother came and said those dreadful things--so I gave you up entirely, and I said that I would never marry you." "But now that you know that I never intentionally shrank from you--and indeed I think that it must have been your fancy, darling--surely you will unsay those cruel words?" Doris looked at him, at the love in his eyes, and his earnest face as he pleaded thus, and she softened considerably. "I’ll just tell you how it is, Bernard," she said, and now her tone was kinder, and there was a light in her blue eyes corresponding with the glow in his. "I’ll just tell you how it is, Bernard, exactly. I feel that, because my father robbed you, I have had a share in the crime, and so I am going to work hard, in order to make you some little reparation--though of course I can never repay you all the money. Do you understand?" and she looked up earnestly into his face. "To make some little reparation? To repay money? What do you mean?" "Twenty-five thousand pounds is so large a sum!" she said. "I can only repay a small part of it. But I’m doing my best; I’m putting by four or five pounds a week, and I have already saved forty pounds. You can have that forty pounds now if you like. It’s yours." "Forty pounds! My dear Doris, what are you talking about?" "I’m going to earn as much money as I possibly can for you, Bernard," said the girl firmly, "in order to repay you at least some of the money my father took from you." "You earn money for me? Your little hands"--he looked down admiringly on them--"your little hands earn money for me?" "Of course I must. It is my bounden duty. And I’m getting on splendidly as regards money: only they say, do you know, Bernard," and her tones were troubled, "they say that I ought not to earn it in the way I do. However," she broke off, and began again, "I mean to earn you a lot of money, that you may have part at least of that which is your very own."