And now the solemn hours shed about her guardian silence, and she could listen to the voice of her soul.  It was incredible that the morning of the day which was not yet dead had witnessed that scene between her and Dagworthy on the Castle Hill; long spaces of featureless misery seem to stretch between.  Perforce she had overborne reflection; one torment coming upon another had occupied her with mere endurance; it was as though a ruthless hand tore from her shred after shred of the fair garment in which she had joyed to clothe herself, while a voice mockingly bade her be in congruence with the sordid shows of the world around.  For a moment, whilst Beethoven sang to her, she knew the light of faith; but the dull mist crept up again and thickened.  Weeping had not eased her bosom; she had only become more conscious of the load of tears surcharging it.  Now she lay upon her bed in the darkness, hushing idle echoes of day, waiting upon the spirit that ever yet had comforted and guided her.

What, divested of all horror due to imagination, was the threat to which her life lay subject?  Dagworthy had it in his power to ruin her father, to blast his remaining years with a desolation to which the life-long struggle with poverty would be the mere pleasantry of fate.  She could no longer entertain a doubt of the guilt the first suggestion of which excited her scornful laughter, and she knew it to be more than probable that her father had yielded to temptation purposely put in his way.  She was not unconscious of the power of reprisal which so gross a plot put into her hands, though it was true that the secrecy Dagworthy had maintained in his intercourse with her left but her bare assertion for evidence against him.  Yet the thought was profitless.  Suppose he did not venture to prosecute on the charge of theft, none the less could he work the ruin he menaced; mere dismissal from his employment, with mention of the cause to this and the other person, was all that was needed to render the wretched clerk an outcast, hopeless of future means of livelihood, for ever disgraced in the eyes of all who knew him.  She felt the cruelty of which this man, whose passions she had so frenzied, was readily capable.  She believed he would not spare her an item of suffering which it was in his power to inflict.  She knew that appeal to him was worse than useless, for it was only too clear that for her to approach him was to inflame his resolution.  Her instinctive fear of him was terribly justified.

With her alone, then, it lay to save her parents from the most dreadful fate that could befal them, from infamy, from destitution, from despair.  For, even if her father escaped imprisonment, it would be impossible for him to live on in Dunfield, and how, at his age, was a new life to be begun?  And it was idle to expect that the last degradation would be spared him; his disgrace would involve her; Dagworthy’s jealousy would not neglect such a means of striking at her engagement.  And Wilfrid must needs know; to Emily not even the possibility of hiding such a thing from him suggested itself.  Could she become his wife with that stigma upon her, bringing as dowry her beggared parents for him to support?