"It ain't for me to answer for him, Mr. Fenwick. Let 'em say what they will, they can't make the white of his eye black. But as for me, I ain't no business to speak of nobody. How should I know why he comes and why he goes? If I said as how he'd come to see his sister, it wouldn't sound true, would it, sir, she being what she is?" He got up and went to the front door, and opened it, and looked about him. But he was looking for nothing. His eyes were full of tears, and he didn't care to wipe the drops away in her presence. "Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I came." [Illustration: "Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I came."] "For who else, then?" "Do you remember how we loved you when you were young, Carry? Do you remember my wife, and how you used to come and play with the children on the lawn? Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?" "Nobody loves me now," she said, talking at him over her shoulder, which was turned to him. He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved her; but there was something human at his heart, something perhaps too human, which made him feel that were he down low upon the ground, some love that was nearer to him, some love that was more easily intelligible, which had been more palpably felt, would in his frailty and his wickedness be of more immediate avail to him than the love even of the Lord God. "Why should you think that, Carry?" "Because I am bad." "If we were to love only the good, we should love very few. I love you, Carry, truly. My wife loves you dearly." "Does she?" said the girl, breaking into low sobs. "No, she don't. I know she don't. The likes of her couldn't love the likes of me. She wouldn't speak to me. She wouldn't touch me." "Come and try, Carry." "Father would kill me," she said. "Your father is full of wrath, no doubt. You have done that which must make a father angry." "Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I wouldn't dare to stand before his eye for a minute. The sound of his voice would kill me straight. How could I go back?" "It isn't easy to make crooked things straight, Carry, but we may try; and they do become straighter if one tries in earnest. Will you answer me one question more?" "Anything about myself, Mr. Fenwick?" "Are you living in sin now, Carry?" She sat silent, not that she would not answer him, but that she did not comprehend the extent of the meaning of his question. "If it be so, and if you will not abandon it, no honest person can love you. You must change yourself, and then you will be loved." "I have got the money which he gave me, if you mean that," she said.