Edith clasped her hands wildly together, and gazed, for a moment, in his face, without a word, almost stupified with horror. But Sir Robert Croyland had deceived her, or attempted to deceive her, on the very same subject they were now discussing, more than once already. She knew it; and of course she doubted; for those who have been once false are never fully believed--those who have been once deceived are always suspicious of those who have deceived them, even when they speak the truth. As thought and reflection came back after the first shock, Edith found much cause to doubt: she could not see how such a thing was possible--how her refusal of Richard Radford could affect her father's life; and she replied, after a time, in a hesitating tone, "How can that be?--I do not understand it.--I do not see how----" "I will tell you," replied Sir Robert Croyland, in a low and peculiarly-quiet voice, which had something fearful in it to his daughter's ear. "It is a long story, Edith; but you must hear it all, my child. You shall be your father's confidant--his only one. You shall share the secret, dreadful as it is, which has embittered his whole existence, rendered his days terrible, his nights sleepless, his bed a couch of fire." Edith trembled in every limb; and Sir Robert, rising, crossed over and opened the door of the drawing-room, to see that there were none of the servants near it. Then closing it again, he returned to her side, and proceeded, holding her hand in his: "You must have remarked," he said, "and perhaps often wondered, my dear child, that Mr. Radford, a man greatly below myself in station, whose manners are repulsive and disagreeable, whose practices I condemn and reprobate, whose notions and principles I abhor, has exercised over me for many years an influence which no other person possesses, that he has induced me to do many things which my better sense and better feelings disapproved, that he has even led me to consent that my best-loved daughter should become the wife of his son, and to urge her to be so at the expense of all her feelings. You have seen all this, Edith, and wondered. Is it not so?" "I have, indeed," murmured Edith. "I have been by no means able to account for it." "Such will not be the case much longer, Edith," replied Sir Robert Croyland. "I am making my confession, my dear child; and you shall hear all. I must recur, too, to the story of young Leyton. You know well that I liked and esteemed him; and although I was offended, as I justly might be, at his conduct towards yourself, and thought fit to show that I disapproved, yet at first, and from the first, I determined, if I saw the attachment continue and prove real and sincere, to sacrifice all feelings of pride, and all considerations of fortune, and when you were of a fit age, to confirm the idle ceremony which had passed between you, by a real and lawful marriage."