“I told you,” he said, gravely and coldly, “some months ago, that I had too much faith in your honour to intrude on affairs which you choose to keep private.  Until you have perfect confidence in me, and can speak with complete candour, I will hear nothing.  You have not that confidence now—­you speak hesitatingly—­your eyes do not meet mine fairly and boldly.  I tell you again, I will hear nothing which begins with such common-place excuses as you have just addressed to me.  Excuses lead to prevarications, and prevarications to—­what I will not insult you by imagining possible in your case.  You are of age, and must know your own responsibilities and mine.  Choose at once, between saying nothing, and saying all.”

He waited a moment after he had spoken, and then quitted the room.  If he could only have known how I suffered, at that instant, under the base necessities of concealment, I might have confessed everything; and he must have pitied, though he might not have forgiven me.

This was my first and last attempt at venturing towards the revelation of my secret to my father, by hints and half-admissions.  As to boldly confessing it, I persuaded myself into a sophistical conviction that such a course could do no good, but might do much harm.  When the wedded happiness I had already waited for, and was to wait for still, through so many months, came at last, was it not best to enjoy my married life in convenient secrecy, as long as I could?—­best, to abstain from disclosing my secret to my father, until necessity absolutely obliged, or circumstances absolutely invited me to do so?  My inclinations conveniently decided the question in the affirmative; and a decision of any kind, right or wrong, was enough to tranquillise me at that time.

So far as my father was concerned, my journey to the country did no good.  I might have returned to London the day after my arrival at the Hall, without altering his opinion of me—­but I stayed the whole week nevertheless, for Clara’s sake.

In spite of the pleasure afforded by my sister’s society, my visit was a painful one.  The selfish longing to be back with Margaret, which I could not wholly repress; my father’s coldness; and the winter gloom and rain which confined us almost incessantly within doors, all tended in their different degrees to prevent my living at ease in the Hall.  But, besides these causes of embarrassment, I had the additional mortification of feeling, for the first time, as a stranger in my own home.

Nothing in the house looked to me what it used to look in former years.  The rooms, the old servants, the walks and views, the domestic animals, all appeared to have altered, or to have lost something, since I had seen them last.  Particular rooms that I had once been fond of occupying, were favourites no longer:  particular habits that I had hitherto always practised in the country, I could only succeed in resuming by an effort which vexed and fretted me.  It was as if my life had run into a new channel since my last autumn and winter at the Hall, and now refused to flow back at my bidding into its old course.  Home seemed home no longer, except in name.