Then Winefred caught her mother's arm, and drawing her round so that they faced each other, she said, in muffled, quivering tones, 'Mother, I have held up my head, and scorned and flouted the folk at Axmouth, because I believed that what they said was a lie. I did not, I would not, suppose that you could commit such a wickedness. I was proud of you. I believed in you. I held it to be a false accusation. I thought you too good, too noble, too upright to be――to be――――' She hesitated. 'Say the word, to be a thief.' 'You gave way to temptation out of love for me. Out of love for me restore what you took.' She panted for breath. She was white with the deadly earnestness with which she pleaded. 'And you――to be brought up as a lady,' muttered Jane, scowling, 'and to throw yourself away on a village lout――one, too, who has not the manhood in him to take to the sea and be what his fathers have been.' 'I do not desire to be a lady.' 'I do――it is my one thought, my only ambition.' 'And at Bath,' pursued Winefred, 'everything about me is false. I am expected to pass as one who has lost her mother. You are supposed to be only a nurse! I hate it, I will not bear it any longer. No――not although my father――no, not although you join with him to force me to this deception. I will have the truth. I will not be false and deceitful. Let all be honest and clear as sea-water, and nothing be held back and muffled up in lies. I have hated it throughout. I have felt like a fly tangled in a cobweb, like a fish in a draw-net. I will not go back unless it be as your daughter. I was so proud of my dear mother, she was poor but honest, and now――――' She burst into tears. Jane continued looking down with knitted brows; she stirred the shingle with one foot, playing with the pebbles, yet regarding them not. 'I do not admit anything,' she said sullenly. 'You are troubled with a bad fancy. But even――――' 'It is no fancy. I could not mistake your words.' 'Suppose it has been as you think. I do not allow it, but let us say that old Captain Job did leave a trifle of money, and that I found and kept it. I had a right to it. It was money taken from my father, squeezed out of his veins. It was the price of my brother's blood.' 'O mother, you do not know this.' 'I do know that my father worked for years under the captain, and died penniless. I do know that my brother was shot when he set up for himself apart from the captain.' 'But you do not know that Captain Rattenbury was responsible in either case.' 'They were in the same business. The money stuck in some hands, and none in those of my father.' 'Mother, dear, you owe all this to what Olver Dench has been saying to you. What is his word worth?' 'Of all men none is so likely to know the truth as Olver.' 'But is he a man who speaks the truth?' 'I care not. You shall be a lady, and you shall marry a gentleman, a real gentleman――such as was your father.' 'But were you happy with him?'