"
"Oh! Edward! Edward! What are you saying?" said Maggie, sitting down on the
dresser, in absolute, bewildered despair. "What have you done?"
"I hardly know. I'm in a horrid dream. I see you think I'm mad. I wish I
were. Won't Nancy come down soon? You must hide me."
"Poor Nancy is ill in bed!" said Maggie.
"Thank God," said he. "There's one less. But my mother will be up soon,
will she not?"
"Not yet," replied Maggie. "Edward, dear, do try and tell me what you have
done. Why should the police be after you?"
"Why, Maggie," said he with a kind of forced, unnatural laugh, "they say
I've forged."
"And have you?" asked Maggie, in a still, low tone of quiet agony.
He did not answer for some time, but sat, looking on the floor with
unwinking eyes. At last he said, as if speaking to himself:
"If I have, it's no more than others have done before, and never been found
out. I was but borrowing money. I meant to repay it. If I had asked Mr.
Buxton, he would have lent it me."
"Mr. Buxton!" said Maggie.
"Yes!" answered he, looking sharply and suddenly up at her. "Your future
father-in-law. My father's old friend. It is he that is hunting me to
death! No need to look so white and horror-struck, Maggie! It's the way of
the world, as I might have known, if I had not been a blind fool."
"Mr. Buxton!" she whispered, faintly.
"Oh, Maggie!" said he, suddenly throwing himself at her feet, "save me! You
can do it.
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