"What? This what? Are you mad? What didn't you dare to speak to my mother, and yet you can speak to me? What have I done that's set you against me? What sin have I committed? Don't think I'm blind. I've seen you cooling off clear enough, and for the life of me I couldn't guess the reason, try as I would and sorrow about it as I would. But since you've ordered me here for this, perhaps you'll go straight on and tell me what's all the matter." "I want you to answer me one question. The answer you must know, and I ask you to swear afore your Maker that you'll tell me the truth. Mind this, I know the truth. It's scorched into me like a burn this many a day. But I must hear it from you too, Cora." She guessed his question, and also guessed that in truth lay her last hope. He spoke positively, and she doubted not that he knew. His fear before her mother was natural. She perceived how easily a man might have gone to a woman with this momentous question on his mind, and how naturally the presence of the woman might strike him dumb at the actual meeting. None knew better than Cora how different is the reality of a conversation with a fellow-creature from the imaginary interview formulated before the event. There was but one problem in her mind now--the advantage or disadvantage of truth. She judged that the case was desperate, but that her only hope lay in honesty. "Speak," she said. "And I swear I'll answer nought but the truth--if I know the truth." He hesitated, and considered her answer. He was fond of her still, but the circumstance of this deception, to which he supposed her a party, had gone far to shake his affection. The grievance was that the facts should have been hidden from him after his proposal. He held that then was the time when Cora's paternity should have been divulged. He believed that had he known it then, it would have made small difference to his love. It was not so much the fact as the hiding of the fact that had troubled him. "Who was your father?" he asked at length, and the words burst out of him in a heap, like an explosion. "I know who he was," she answered. "Name him, then." "You see, Timothy, you never asked. I often thought whether there was any reason to tell you, and often and often I felt you ought to know; but you're a wise and far-seeing man, and I wasn't the only one to be thought on. I'd have told you from the first, even at the risk of angering you, but there was mother. I couldn't do it--knowing what she'd feel. I was a daughter afore I was a sweetheart. Would you have done it when you came to think on your mother?" "Name him."