But for the third time in
his life Sebastian was found capable of maintaining this impenetrable
reserve. Pepita's true status in her own country--madame's suspicious
debts and those damaging letters from London--Leam's hiding-place: he
had had strength enough to keep his own counsel about the first two
unbroken, and now he betrayed no more about this last. It may as well be
said that for this he had sufficient reason. Leam, who had confessed
her crime, and announced her intention of flight and of hiding herself
where no one should find her again, had not told him more than these
bare bones of the story. And he did not care to know more. The skeleton
was horrible enough as it stood: he was by no means inclined to clothe
it with the flesh of detail, still less to follow his erring child to
her place of exile. He was content that she should be blotted out. It
was the sole reparation that she could make.
This sudden disappearance ended the foreign tour which had been
Josephine's sweetest anticipations of the honeymoon, for Mr. Dundas
turned back for home at once, intending to put up Ford House for sale
and leave the place for ever. He was ashamed to live at North Aston, he
said, after Leam's extraordinary conduct, her shameful, shameless
_esclandre_, which--said Josephine to her own people, weeping--she
supposed was due to her, the poor little thing not liking her for a
stepmother.
"Though, indeed, she need not have been afraid," said the good creature
effusively, "for I had intended to be kindness itself to the poor dear
girl.
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