Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to gain what was now the one object of my existence if I buried myself in a remote north-country village? It was simply impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his return to his own house.
“I thank you, uncle, with all my heart,” I said. “But I am afraid I can’t leave London for the present.”
“You can’t leave London for the present?” he repeated. “What does the girl mean, Mr. Benjamin?” Benjamin evaded a direct reply.
“She is kindly welcome here, Doctor Starkweather,” he said, “as long as she chooses to stay with me.”
“That’s no answer,” retorted my uncle, in his rough-and-ready way. He turned to me. “What is there to keep you in London?” he asked. “You used to hate London. I suppose there is some reason?”
It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take him into my confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it but to rouse my courage, and tell him frankly what I had it in my mind to do. The vicar listened in breathless dismay. He turned to Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in his face, when I had done.
“God help her!” cried the worthy man. “The poor thing’s troubles have turned her brain!”
“I thought you would disapprove of it, sir,” said Benjamin, in his mild and moderate way. “I confess I disapprove of it myself.”
“‘Disapprove of it’ isn’t the word,” retorted the vicar. “Don’t put it in that feeble way, if you please. An act of madness--that’s what it is, if she really mean what she says.” He turned my way, and looked as he used to look at the afternoon service when he was catechising an obstinate child. “You don’t mean it,” he said, “do you?”
“I am sorry to forfeit your good opinion, uncle,” I replied. “But I must own that I do certainly mean it.”
“In plain English,” retorted the vicar, “you are conceited enough to think that you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in Scotland have failed. _They_ couldn’t prove this man’s innocence, all working together. And _you_ are going to prove it single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman,” cried my uncle, suddenly descending from indignation to irony. “May a plain country parson, who isn’t used to lawyers in petticoats, be permitted to ask how you mean to do it?”