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?

Did it mean that? Was this the thought that she had dreaded to face
throughout the day? Was it not only her father whose ruin was involved,
and must she too bid farewell to hope?

She let those ghastly eyes stare from the darkness into her own, and
tried to exhaust their horror. It overtaxed her courage with a smothered
cry of fear she sprang upright, and her shaking hands struck a flame to
bring light into the room. Not once, but again and again, did the chill
of terror pass through her whole frame. She caught a passing glimpse of
her image in the glass, and was fascinated into regarding it closely.
'You, who sta