The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1911-04-24
CHAPTER XVI.
Master and Pupil,


Here was /, with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a
want
Put into a look-just look, your
part
While mine to repay it -. vainest
vaunti"
r. Browning.
They stood together in the porch.
multi in the soul unguessed by the
other. Not since her brother fought
and wounded his enemy, afterwards
clipping with the girl who was the
cause of the quarrel, had Emma
Bardsley felt such clashing emotions,
such a forcible breakup of the staid
calm of every day..
Jem, though all this was hid from
him, yet perceived that something
was different from usual. His aunt
had laid her hand upon his arm. and
in her voice as she presented him to
those two cautious of women" as he
described them to himself, had been
a tone that was new to hin---a tone
to which some tender thing deep
down in him quivered out faint,
faint response.
Her first determination had been to
look him in the face, tell him OF
what he was accused-ask him
souarely-"Is this true?''
And now. when the moment was
come, she could not do it. Literally.
she could not, Why? It was the
right the obvious thing to do. In a
book she was sure it was what would
| be done. You could not hear a man
charged with a dreadful think like
| this, and not give him a chance to
clear himself. But for her. it was
| impossible to open her mouth and
touch upon so intimate a question. 1t
belonged to a region where Jem and
she had never trode. The question
of his emotions, his yearnings, his de-
sires, had never troubled her. They
| had as it were no language in which
they might communicate upon this
head. She was dumb. Perhaps an
| other feeling mingled with the dead
~. inexplicable shyness. Perhaps a
dread Of his possible answer terrified
! her into silence.
| If Jem had done it, and if she tax
| ed him with it, she believed that he
i CgI&, Z, fo %l,o
possibility of his tying to her. And
| if he confessed to some moment of
reckless indulgence, issuing in conse-
| quences so grave. SO awful--what
give? Ought he to marry the girl
| There lay the crux Of the question.
If Jem was the father of Olives chill
dren, ought he. speaking from the
highest view of things. to marry her
If he did, his expiation for mo-
ments passion. would be lifetime
| of misery. He would be tied to q
woman with whom he never could be
mated. The girl might be what ia
known as good girl, but for him
But at least she was light girl one
without much modesty or self-res-
pect. And the children were half hers
Was there not moro probability OF
sin, of further transgresSion, if ne
married her than if he did what he
had apparently done provided for
her and her children? There were
men in the village who would marry
her SO dowered-marry her and be
| happy with her. Was it right to
commit a second sin in order to atone
for the first--to marry woman whom
you neither loved nor respected, be-
cause you had done her an injury
which she could probably have pre-
| vented had she wished?
But what was the religious view
What would Father Conroy say, she
/ wondered? Did he know the truth ?
/ The wild questions darted through
her brain, while she stood, in the
sweet evening air. watching Jem car
ry the lady's bicycle up the steps, prop