then, are you so strange to me? Why have you altered so?"
"I am not altered to you," she said.
"Then you love me still!" he cried.
"Will you listen to me?" she asked, "I have been trying to strengthen myself for this meeting, and you must not weaken me. No; do not kiss me! There is something that must be told – that you must hear!"
"I will listen to you, my darling – mine, and no other man's. You do not love another, Phœbe?"
"No, Fred." She was not aware that she had uttered the dear name.
"I am happy," he said. "Go on, my dear."
Then she told him of the oath her father had extracted from her that she would not marry without his consent, and said that, with that oath upon her conscience, she could not expect Fred to be bound to her.
"To receive you as my lover," she said, "would be, to my mind, as if I am spiritually breaking the oath I have sworn. It would make me feel guilty; it would lower me in my own esteem; it would be playing with my conscience."
"When you took the oath, Phœbe," said Fred Cornwall, immensely relieved, but at the same time perplexed, by the revelation, "you were not aware what you were binding yourself to?"
"I was not aware of it," she said. "My father spoke so kindly to me, and seemed to regard you with such favour, that I thought he intended to sanction our engagement. But he may not have known what was in my mind, as assuredly I did not know what was in his. It is not for me to say, and you must not press me. I am striving to do what is right. Help me to do it! I am bound by my oath. Without my father's consent I cannot marry you; he will never give it, and while he lives we can be nothing to each other. I have thought of it – oh, so seriously! – and I have decided in what I believe to be the right way. If in the future I am ever in your mind, I wish you to think of me with respect."
"Through all the future that is before me," said Fred, "you will be ever in my mind, and I shall ever think of you with respect. If my love needed strengthening, what you have said would strengthen it; but it can never be stronger, more devoted, more complete than it is; nothing can make it so; and nothing can weaken it. 'Give me your hand, Phœbe.'" She looked at him pleadingly. "Give me your hand, Phœbe." She gave it to him. "I swear to you solemnly, on my honour as a man, on my faith as a Christian, that I will never marry another woman. May misfortune pursue and overtake me quickly if I ever prove false to the love I have given you! Have you anything to say to me, Phœbe?"
She understood him. He had given her a solemn pledge. He had a right to a similar pledge from her.
"If I do not marry you," she said, "I will never marry. Though we may be parted for life, I will be true to the love I have given you. And now" – she held out her arms imploringly – "strengthen me, Fred!"
He rose, and stood apart from her, with his face averted. Presently he resumed his seat by her side.
"Until a happier day arrives," he said, taking her unresisting hand, "we will not meet as lovers. We are brother and sister. Kiss me, Phœbe."
She kissed him, and he kissed her. Thus the faithful compact was made.
Before the week was at an end, Fred wrote the following letter to Miser Farebrother:
"SIR, – Your daughter has told me of the oath she took that she will never marry without your consent. She feels herself bound by this oath, and will adhere to it. Thus, while you live, a life of unhappiness is before her, if you refuse to give your consent to our union. She loves me, and I love her with a most perfect love. We have pledged ourselves anew to each other, but are both clear upon the point that we cannot be wed without your sanction. I ask, I implore, you to give it. I am not a rich man; but I have a good position and the prospect of a prosperous future is before me. My family is a family of standing, and is honoured and respected. If you will permit me, I will send you credentials of my character, with which you cannot fail to be satisfied. Into my union with your daughter the question of money does not enter. We shall be satisfied to work our way without help from you in a money shape, either now or hereafter. To this I am prepared to bind myself by written document; and all that a man can do to make the woman he loves happy, that I will do to the utmost extent of my power. Respectfully and humbly, I beg of you to release your daughter from her oath, and to bestow upon her a happiness for which she and I will be ever grateful. I remain, sir, faithfully and obediently yours,
The letter was despatched, and day after day Fred looked eagerly for an answer to it. But none came.
There arrived, however, at Aunt Leth's house a paper for Phœbe, in her father's writing. It was not signed, nor was she addressed in it by name. This was its purport:
"I have received from a certain Mr. Frederick Cornwall a letter in which he asks me to release you from a solemn oath you voluntarily took, and to give my consent to your marriage with him. This I will never do, nor will I ever release you from your oath. In that oath was comprised a daughter's duty to her father – a duty you have wilfully and systematically neglected and failed to perform. Your guilty desires can only be accomplished by my death. When you are prepared to obey me in the one wish of my life, you can come to me – not until then."
CHAPTER IV
JEREMIAH IN TRIBULATION
Jeremiah Pamflett, owing the book-maker with whom he made his bets at Doncaster over three thousand pounds, very soon made the disagreeable discovery that Captain Ablewhite had played him false. He had made no arrangement with the book-maker to give Jeremiah time to settle, and Jeremiah himself personally was compelled to arrange with the man to whom he owed so large an amount of money. He found it no easy task. The book-maker bullied and blustered and threatened exposure, and the result was that Jeremiah had to part not only with acceptances of his own by which he was bound to pay sums at stated periods, but also with all the securities he held on his own account from persons with whom he had had private business. Among these acceptances was Mr. Lethbridge's for three hundred pounds, which Jeremiah had discounted for Kiss and the dramatic author, and which in a very short time would be due.
The terror of this acceptance weighed most heavily upon Uncle Leth. As the day approached upon which it was necessary it should be paid, his fears increased to an almost unbearable pitch. He had written to Jeremiah Pamflett asking for renewal, and the answer he received was to the effect that the acceptance was in the hands of another person, and that it would have to be paid on the day of maturity. The reason of Uncle Leth writing this letter to Jeremiah was that in interviews with Kiss and Mr. Linton they mournfully declared their inability to raise the smallest sum to help Uncle Leth in his difficulty. They were overwhelmed with self-reproaches, but this did not help Uncle Leth in his difficulty, nor stave off impending ruin. Uncle Leth had succeeded in discovering the name of the man who held the bill; he had appealed to him in vain for renewal. "The acceptance will have to be met," said the book-maker. "If it is not, I shall sell you up. I have ascertained that you hold a responsible position in a bank. Ask the manager to advance you the money if you happen to be short yourself."
To ask the bank manager to assist him in paying an acceptance held by a racing man would be to ask for his dismissal. It would be tantamount to a confession that he had been indulging in that worst of vices – betting on horses.
Uncle Leth had confided to his wife, and she, although she strove to comfort him, was terrified at the prospect. She had thought of Fred Cornwall, but she knew, from the young man's own indirect admissions, that he was not in a position to assist them. He knew nothing of the acceptance, and therefore could make no reference to it in his confidences with Aunt Leth. "It is an uphill fight," he had
