"So, you doubt me still? Are your things packed?'
"Then if your mother is well enough, and will not let you leave her, you had better go next week."
"Wilful to the last. So be it. Take this; you cannot refuse it in duty to your mother."
He put in my hand an order for a large sum of money. I threw it into the fire.
"There have been criminals," I exclaimed, "who have suffered from a life-long fear, lest the widow and orphans, starved through their crime, should compass their dying bed. Though we starve in a garret, we touch no bread of yours."
"Bravo, Miss Melodrame. You need never starve in the present state of the stage."
"That I don't understand; but this I do. It is perhaps the last time I shall ever see you living. Whether you did that deed or not is known to God, and you, and possibly one other. But whether you did it or not, I know it is on your soul. Your days are wretched, your nights are troubled. You shall die as your brother died, but not so prepared for death."
"Good bye, Clara. My lunch is coming up."
God has much to forgive me, but nothing worse than the dark thought of that speech. In my fury at weakness in such a cause, I had dared sometimes to imagine that my mother knew him to be the murderer, but concealed it for the sake of the family honour!
No need to recount my bitter farewell to all the scenes and objects I had loved so long, to all which possessed a dark yet tender interest, and most of all to my father's grave. That some attention might still be paid to this, I entrusted it to the care of an old housekeeper of ours, who was living in the village. My last visit was in the moonlight, and dear mother was there. I carried rather than led her away. Slight as my knowledge has been of lightsome and happy love, I am sure that a sombre affection is far the stronger and sweeter.
As we began our journey, a crowd of the villagers met us beyond the lodge, and lined the Gloucester road as far as the old oak-tree. While our hired conveyance passed between them, the men stood mute with their hats in their hands, the women sobbed and curtseyed, and blessed us, and held up their children to look at us.
Our refuge was the small estate or farm in Devonshire, which I have mentioned as my mother's property. This, which produced £45 a-year, was all that now remained to us, except a sum of £1,000 left to me by a godfather, and of which I could not touch the principal. The residue of the personalty, and the balance at the banker's, we had refused to take, being assured that legally we were responsible to Mr. Vaughan, even for the back rents of the Gloucestershire estate. Of course we had plenty of jewellery, some of it rather valuable, but the part most precious was heirloom, and that we had left behind. Most of our own had been my father's gift, and therefore we could not bear to sell it.