.

"Do you mean constantly--in your old, friendly way?"

"Yes, constantly; and," she added after a pause, "not only here, but
at Orley Farm also." And then there was another pause between them.

Sir Peregrine certainly was not a cruel man, nor was his heart by any
means hardened against the lady with whom circumstances had lately
joined him so closely. Indeed, since the knowledge of her guilt had
fully come upon him, he had undertaken the conduct of her perilous
affairs in a manner more confidential even than that which had
existed while he expected to make her his wife. But, nevertheless,
it went sorely against the grain with him when it was proposed that
there should still exist a close intimacy between the one cherished
lady of his household and the woman who had been guilty of so base
a crime. It seemed to him that he might touch pitch and not be
defiled;--he or any man belonging to him. But he could not reconcile
it to himself that the widow of his son should run such risk. In
his estimation there was something almost more than human about the
purity of the only woman that blessed his hearth. It seemed to him
as though she were a sacred thing, to be guarded by a shrine,--to be
protected from all contact with the pollutions of the outer world.
And now it was proposed to him that she should take a felon to her
bosom as her friend!

"But will that be necessary, Edith?" he said; "and after all that has
been revealed to us now, will it be wise?"

"I think so," she said, speaking again with a very low voice. "Why,
should I not?"

"Because she has shown herself unworthy of such friendship;--unfit
for it I should say."

"Unworthy! Dear father, is she not as worthy and as fit as she was
yesterday? If we saw clearly into each other's bosom, whom should we
think worthy?"

"But you would not choose for your friend one--one who could do such
a deed as that?"

"No; I would not choose her because she had so acted; nor perhaps if
I knew all beforehand would I open my heart to one who had so done.
But it is different now. What are love and friendship worth if they
cannot stand against such trials as these?"

"Do you mean, Edith, that no crime would separate you from a friend?"

"I have not said that. There are circumstances always. But if she
repents,--as I am sure she does, I cannot bring myself to desert her.
Who else is there that can stand by her now; what other woman? At any
rate I have promised her, and you wou