Would it not be just worthy of him to have done so and never told one of his family! At least there need be nothing incredible in it! This girl—yes—plainly she had both cunning and fascination enough to make him not only run after her but marry her! How was he to know the truth of the thing? The coward would not have the courage to contradict her, but he would know if he were lying!

“Do—do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that he has married you—without a word to his own father or mother?”

Then at last Cornelius spoke, rising on his elbow in the bed:

“Yes, father,” he said with slow determination, “I have married her. It is all my fault, not a bit hers.”

“Why did you not let us know then?” cried the father.

“Because I was a coward,” answered Corney, speaking the truth with courage. “I knew you would not like it.”

“Little you know of what I like or dislike!”

“You can soon prove him wrong, sir!” said Amy, looking up in his face through the growing light of the morning. “Forgive us, and take me too. I was so happy to think I was going to belong to you all! I would never have married him, if I had known—without your consent, I mean. It was very wrong of Corney, but I will try to make him sorry for it.”

“You never will!” said Corney.

Now first the full horror of what he had done broke upon the mind of Mr. Raymount. He stood for a moment appalled.

“You will let me take him away then?” said Amy, thinking he hesitated to receive her.

Now whether it was from an impulse of honesty towards her, or of justification of himself, I cannot tell, but he instantly answered,

“Do you know that his money is stolen?”

“If he stole it,” she replied, “he will never steal again.”

“He will never get another chance. He cannot get a situation now.”

“I will work for us both. He belongs to me as much as I do to him. If he had only kept nothing from me, nothing of this would have happened.—Do come, Corney, while I am able to walk, I feel as if I were going to die.”

“And this is the woman I was such a savage to last night!” said Mr. Raymount to himself.

“Forgive me, Amy!” he cried, stretching out his arms to her. “I have behaved like a brute. To strike my son’s wife! I deserve to be hanged for it. I shall never forgive myself. But you must forgive me, for God’s sake!”

Even before he had finished, she was in his arms clinging to him.

The strong man was now the weaker. The father, not the daughter, wept. After a moment she drew back her head.

“Come, Corney,” she said, “out of your bed and down on your knees to your own blessed father, and confess your sins to him. Tell him you’re sorry for them, and you’ll never do them again.”