He certainly could not be got to say that he would apologise for
the accusation he had made. It was nothing less that his daughter
asked; and he could hardly refrain himself from anger when she
asked it. 'There should not have been a moment,' he said, 'before
she came and told me and told me all.' Poor Lady Mary's position
was certainly uncomfortable enough. The great sin,--the sin which
was so great that to have known it for a day without revealing it
was in itself a damning sin on the part of Mrs Finn,--was Lady
Mary's sin. And she differed so entirely from her father as to
think that the sin of her own was a virtue, and that to have
spoken of it to him would have been, on the part of Mrs Finn, a
treachery so deep that no woman ought to have forgive it! When he
spoke of a matter which deeply affected his honour,--she could
hardly refrain from asserting that his honour was quite safe in
his daughter's hands. And when in his heart he declared that it
should have been Mrs Finn's first care to save him from disgrace,
Lady Mary did break out, 'Papa there could be no disgrace.
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