COUSIN PHILLIS. 127
She hung her head, and leant more heavily than before on her supporting hand.
"I don't understand," said her father; but he was beginning to understand. Phillis did not answer till he asked her again. I could have struck him now for his cruelty; but then I knew all.
"I loved him, father!" she said at length, raising her eyes to the minister's face.
"Had he ever spoken of love to you? Paul says not!"
"Never." She let fall her eyes, and drooped more than ever. I almost thought she would fall.
"I could not have believed it," said he, in a hard voice, yet sighing the moment he had spoken. A dead silence for a moment. "Paul! I was unjust to you. You deserved blame, but not all that I said." Then again a silence. I thought I saw Phillis's white lips moving, but it might be the flickering of the candle-light — a moth had flown in through the open casement, and was fluttering round the flame; I might have saved it, but I did not care to do so, my heart was too full of other things. At any rate, no sound was heard for long endless minutes. Then he said, — "Phillis! did we not make you happy here? Have we not loved you enough?"
She did not seem to understand the drift of this question; she looked up as if bewildered, and her beautiful eyes dilated with a painfal, tortured expression. He went on, without noticing the look on her face; he did not see it, I am sure.
"And yet you would have left us, left your home, left your father and your mother, and gone away with this stranger, wandering over the world."
