“Martin,” she said, sharpening her voice to address me, “do you think your father is in any danger?”

“No, I do not,” I answered, notwithstanding his gestures and frowns.

“Then that is at an end,” she said.  “I was almost foolish enough to think that I would yield.  You don’t know what this disappointment is to me.  Everybody will be talking of it, and some of them will pity me, and the rest laugh at me.  I am ashamed of going out-of-doors anywhere.  Oh, it is too bad!  I cannot bear it.”

She was positively writhing with agitation; and tears, real tears I am sure, started into my father’s eyes.

“My poor little Julia!” he said; “my darling!  But what can be done if you will not marry Martin?”

“He ought to go away from Guernsey,” she sobbed.  “I should feel better if I was quite sure I should never see him, or hear of other people seeing him.”

“I will go,” I said.  “Guernsey will be too hot for me when all this is known.”

“And, uncle,” she pursued, speaking to him, not me, “he ought to promise me to give up that girl.  I cannot set him free to go and marry her—­a stranger and adventuress.  She will be his ruin.  I think, for my sake, he ought to give her up.”

“So he ought, and so he will, my love,” answered my father.  “When he thinks of all we owe to you, he will promise you that.”

I pondered over what our family owed to Julia for some minutes.  It was truly a very great debt.  Though I had brought her into perhaps the most painful position a woman could be placed in, she was generously sacrificing her just resentment and revenge against my father’s dishonesty, in order to secure our name from blot.

On the other hand, I had no reason to suppose Olivia loved me, and I should do her no wrong.  I felt that, whatever it might cost me, I must consent to Julia’s stipulation.

“It is the hardest thing you could ask me,” I said, “but I will give her up.  On one condition, however; for I must not leave her without friends.  I shall tell Tardif, if he ever needs help for Olivia, he must apply to me through my mother.”

“There could be no harm in that,” observed my father.

“How soon shall I leave Guernsey?” I asked.

“He cannot go until you are well again, uncle,” she answered.  “I will stay here to nurse you, and Martin must take care of your patients.  We will send him word a day or two before we return, and I should like him to be gone before we reach home.”

That was my sentence of banishment.  She had only addressed me once during the conversation.  It was curious to see how there was no resentment in her manner toward my father, who had systematically robbed her, while she treated me with profound wrath and bitterness.

She allowed him to hold her hand and stroke her hair; she would not have suffered me to approach her.  No doubt it was harder for her to give up a lover than to lose the whole of her property.