No advantage whatever was obtained by Lady Mary's interview with her father. He persisted that Mrs. Finn had been untrue to him when she left Matching without telling him all that she knew of his daughter's engagement with Mr. Tregear. No doubt by degrees that idea which he at first entertained was expelled from his head,—the idea that she had been cognisant of the whole thing before she came to Matching; but even this was done so slowly that there was no moment at which he became aware of any lessened¹ feeling of indignation. To his thinking she had betrayed her trust, and he could not be got by his daughter to say that he would forgive her. He certainly could not be got to say that he would apologise for the accusation² 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 to 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 entirely³ from her father as to think that this sin of her own was a virtue⁴, 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 forgiven it! When he spoke⁵ of a matter which deeply affected⁶ 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." "That for a moment shall be laid aside," he said, with that manner by which even his peers in council had never been able not to be awed⁷, "but if you communicate with Mrs. Finn at all you must make her understand that I regard her conduct as inexcusable."

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