When I told Joshua I suspected she was gone to London I was
not telling him the truth. I knew nothing certainly about where she was
gone; but I did assuredly suspect that she had turned her steps exactly
in the contrary direction to London--that is to say, far out Bangbury
way. She had been constantly asking all sorts of questions of Ellen
Gough, who told me of it, about roads, and towns, and people in that
distant part of the country: and this was my only reason for thinking
she had taken herself away in that direction. Though it was but a
matter of bare suspicion at the best, still I deceived my brother as to
my real opinion when he asked it of me: and this was a sin which I now
humbly and truly repent of. But the thought of helping him, by so
little even as a likely guess, to bring our infamy home to our own
doors, by actually bringing his degraded daughter back with him into my
presence, in the face of the whole town--this thought, I say, was too
much for me. I believed that the day when she crossed our threshold
again would be the day of my death, as well as the day of my farewell
to home; and under that conviction I concealed from Joshua what my real
opinion was.
"I deserved to suffer for this; and I did suffer for it.
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