For some moments Minnie could not summon courage to reply; then at last, by a supreme effort, she confessed her many accidental meetings with Miles Tremenhere at first, and this one by appointment.
"Dear Aunty," she whispered, "I know now how very wrong it has been; but I feared telling you, lest you should betray me to the others. And though I know you will be just, they would not perhaps, but by coercion, endeavour to force me to their wills; they have spoken of such things, and I couldn't bear that!"
Dorcas was pained beyond measure. Her surprise left her speechless; for the suspicions instilled into Juvenal's mind by Burton, were strangers to her. Sylvia, we have seen, was on a wrong road altogether; thus, she had been kept in complete ignorance. She durst scarcely question her niece: she feared lest some new sorrow might come to light--some positive engagement. In her alarm, she dreaded almost to hear that they were married. Minnie mistook her silence, and, clasping her again in her arms, besought her not to betray her. "I was so wretched in deceiving you," she cried; "but do not let my uncle, or aunt Sylvia, know; and oh, not Dora!" And she shuddered with a blind terror, not seeing the phantom of her fear: "They will lock me up, and be unkind, and harsh--I know they will; and then I will answer for nothing I may do!"
"Minnie, Minnie--my child--my own child, do not say such things--there," and she fondly kissed her; "be calm; you have done wrong, but no one shall know it, so you promise me never to meet him again without my knowledge."
"I promise all, aunt--my mother; for indeed you have been one to the motherless child. I never will conceal any thing again from you; and you won't tell Dora?"
"No one, Minnie; but why especially not Dora?"
Minnie looked down in thought. "It is not my secret," she said at last, looking in Dorcas's face; "but I will tell you, for I cannot understand it." And she related the morning's meeting between the two. Dorcas started! "Something of this Sylvia has hinted to me," she said; "how did she know it? I paid little attention to it, she fancies so many things."
"She must have been in the garden, too!" exclaimed Minnie. "It is a strange mystery; for Dora professes to hate him, and is always speaking against him to me."