I don't show it in my face as a rule, do I?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no! You always seem bright and cheerful."
Her tears were raining fast now. She took his hand and pressed it to her lips.
"But I have had this trouble for some time, my little girl."
"You will tell me all about it, please, dad?"
"No, my darling, you would not understand, and my keenest pain would be that you should ever know. You can remove this trouble, little Val, and then we need not be parted. Now, sit down by my side."
Mr. Paget sank again into the leathern armchair. He was still trembling visibly. This moment through which he was passing was one of the most bitter of his life.
"You will not breathe a word of what I have told you to any mortal, Valentine?"
"Death itself should not drag it from me," replied the girl.
She set her lips, her eyes shone fiercely. Then she looked at her trembling father, and they glowed with love and pity.
"I can save you," she whispered, going on her knees by his side. "It is lovely to think of saving you. What can I do?"
"My little Val – my little precious darling!"
"What can I do to save you, father?"
"Valentine, dear – you can marry Gerald Wyndham."
Valentine had put her arms round her father's neck, now they dropped slowly away – her eyes grew big and frightened.
"I don't love him," she whispered.
"Never mind, he loves you – he is a good fellow – he will treat you well. If you marry him you need not be parted from me. You and he can live together here – here, in this house. There need be no difference at all, except that you will have saved your father."
Paget spoke with outward calmness, but the anxiety under his words made them thrill. Each slowly uttered sentence fell like a hammer of pain on the girl's head.
"I don't understand," she said again in a husky tone. "I would, I will do anything to save you. But Mr. Wyndham is poor and young – in some things he is younger than I am. How can my marrying him take the load off your heart, father? Father, dear, speak."
"I can give you no reason, Valentine, you must take it on trust. It is all a question of your faith in me. I do not see any loophole of salvation but through you, my little girl. If you marry Wyndham I see peace and rest ahead, otherwise we are amongst the breakers. If you do this thing for your old father, Valentine, you will have to do it in the dark, for never, never, I pray, until Eternity comes, must you know what you have done."
Valentine Paget had always a delicate and bright color in her cheeks. It was soft as the innermost blush of a rose, and this delicate and lovely color was one of her chief charms. Now it faded, leaving her young face pinched and small and drawn. She sank down on the hearthrug, clasping her hands in her lap, her eyes looking straight before her.
"I never wanted to marry," she said at last. "Certainly not yet, for I am only a child. I am only seventeen, but other girls of seventeen are old compared to me. When you are only a child, it is dreadful to marry some one you don't care about, and it is dreadful to do a deed in the dark. If you trusted me, father – if you told me all the dreadful truth whatever it is, it might turn me into a woman – an old woman even – but it would be less bad than this. This seems to crush me – and oh, it does frighten me so dreadfully."
Mr. Paget rose from his seat and walked up and down the room.
"You shan't be crushed or frightened," he said. "I will give it up."
"And then the blow will fall on you?"
"I may be able to avert it. I will see. Forget what I said to-night, little girl."
Mortimer Paget's face just now was a good deal whiter than his daughter's, but there was a new light in his eyes – a momentary gleam of nobility.
"I won't crush you, Val," he said, and he meant his words.
"And I won't crush you," said the girl.
She went up to his side, and, taking his hand, slipped his arm round her neck.
"We will live together, and I will have perfect faith in you, and I'll marry Mr. Wyndham. He is good – oh, yes, he is good and kind; and if he did not love me so much, if he did not frighten me with just being too loving when I don't care at all, I might get on very well with him. Now dismiss your cares, father. If this can save you, your little Val has done it. Let us come up to the drawing-room. Mrs. Johnstone must think herself forsaken. Shall I sing to you to-night, daddy, some of the old-fashioned songs? Come, you have got to smile and look cheerful for Val's sake. If I give myself up for you, you must do as much for me. Come, a smile if you please, sir. 'Begone, dull care.' You and I will never agree."
CHAPTER IX
It was soon after this that Valentine Paget's world became electrified with the news of her engagement. Wyndham was congratulated on all sides, and those people who had hitherto not taken the slightest notice of a rather boyish and unpretentious young man, now found much to say in his favor.
Yes, he was undoubtedly good-looking – a remarkable face, full of interest – he must be clever too – he looked it. And then as to his youth – why was it that people a couple of months ago had considered him a lad, a boy – why, he was absolutely old for his two-and-twenty years. A grave thoughtful man with a wonderfully sweet expression.
It was plain to be seen that Wyndham, the expectant curate of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, and Wyndham, the promised husband of Valentine Paget, were totally different individuals. Wyndham's prospects were changed, so was his appearance – so, in very truth, was the man himself.
Where he had been too young he was now almost too old, that was the principal thing outsiders noticed. But at twenty-two one can afford such a change, and his gravity, his seriousness, and a certain proud thoughtful look, which could not be classified by any one as a sad look, was vastly becoming to Wyndham.
His future father-in-law could not make enough of him, and even Valentine caught herself looking at him with a shy pride which was not very far removed from affection.
Wyndham had given up the promised curacy – this was one of Mr. Paget's most stringent conditions. On the day he married Valentine he was to enter the great shipping firm of Paget, Brake and Carter as a junior partner, and in the interim he went there daily to become acquainted – the world said – with the ins and outs of his new profession.
It was all a great step in the direction of fortune and fame, and the Rectory people ought, of course, to have rejoiced.
They were curious and unworldly, however, at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, and somehow the news of the great match Gerald was about to contract brought them only sorrow and distress. Lilias alone stood out against the storm of woe which greeted the receipt of Wyndham's last letter.
"It is a real trouble," she said, her voice shaking a good deal; "but we have got to make the best of it. It is for Gerald's happiness. It is selfish for us just to fret because we cannot always have him by our side."
"There'll be no millennium," said Augusta in a savage voice. "I might have guessed it. That horrid selfish, selfish
