'The day Ellen gives her consent, you shall have
the money,' he told me; 'I can't say anything fairer than that or more
liberal.'"
"He doesn't suspect why you want it, does he, father?" Ellen asked with a
painful sense of shame.
"Who can tell what he may suspect? He's as deep as Satan," said the
bailiff, with a temporary forgetfulness of his desire to exhibit this
intended son-in-law of his in a favourable light. "He knows that I want
the money very badly; I couldn't help his knowing that; and he must think
it's something out of the common that makes me want two hundred pounds."
"I daresay he guesses the truth," Ellen said, with a profound sigh.
It seemed to her the bitterest trial of all, that her father's
wrong-doing should be known to Stephen Whitelaw. That hideous prospect of
the dock and the gaol was far off as yet; she had not even begun to
realise it; but she did fully realise the fact of her father's shame, and
the blow seemed to her a heavy one, heavier than she could bear.
For some minutes there was silence between father and daughter. The girl
sat with her face hidden in her hands; the bailiff smoked his pipe in
sullen meditation.
"Is there no other way?" Ellen asked at last, in a plaintive despairing
tone; "no other way, father?"
"None," growled William Carley.
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