“My child, this is no place for you and me.”

“No more it is, papa,” said Grace.  “I know that too well.”

“Then why did you let them bring us here?”

“Papa,” said Grace, “I forgot all about that.”

“Forgot it!”

“It seems incredible, does it not?  But what I saw and felt thrust what I had only heard out of my mind.  Oh, papa! you were insensible, poor dear; but if you had only seen Walter Clifford when he saved us!  I took him for some giant miner.  He seemed ever so much bigger than the gentleman I loved—­ay, and I shall love him to my dying day, whether or not he has—­But when he sprang to my side, and took me with his bare, bleeding arms to his heart, that panted so, I thought his heart would burst, and mine, too, could I feel another woman between us.  All that might be true, but it was unreal.  That he loved me, and had saved me, that was real.  And when we sat together in the carriage, your poor bleeding head upon my bosom, and his hand grasping mine, and his sweet eyes beaming with love and joy, what could I realize except my father’s danger and my husband’s mighty love?  I was all present anxiety and present bliss.  His sin and my alarms seemed hundreds of miles off, and doubtful.  And even since I have been here, see how greater and nearer things have overpowered me.  Your deadly weakness—­you, who were strong, poor dear—­oh, let me kiss you, dear darling—­till you had saved your child; Walter’s terrible danger.  Oh, my dear father, spare me.  How can a poor, weak woman think of such different woes, and realize and suffer them all at once?  Spare me, dear father, spare me!  Let me see you stronger; let me see him safe, and then let us think of that other cruel thing, and what we ought to say to Colonel Clifford, and what we ought to do, and where we are to go.”

“My poor child,” said Hope, faintly, with tears in his eyes, “I say no more.  Take your own time.”

Grace did not abuse this respite.  So soon as the doctor declared Walter out of immediate danger, and indeed safe, if cautiously treated, she returned of her own accord to the miserable subject that had been thrust aside.

After some discussion, they both agreed that they must now confide their grief to Colonel Clifford, and must quit his home, and make him master of the situation, and sole depository of the terrible secret for a time.

Hope wished to make the revelation, and spare his daughter that pain.  She assented readily and thankfully.

This was a woman’s first impulse—­to put a man forward.

But by-and-by she had one of her fits of hard thinking, and saw that such a revelation ought not to be made by one straightforward man to another, but with all a woman’s soothing ways.  Besides, she had already discovered that the Colonel had a great esteem and growing affection for her; and, in short, she felt that if the blow could be softened by anybody, it was by her.