Wild Heather by L.T. Meade

My father kept on holding my hand. We neither of us spoke; there are moments when words fail us, and these happened to be some. The sun crept higher and higher in the heavens, it beat down on us, but it was tempered by the pleasant, cool sea breezes. We were both looking into the future, and, truth to tell, our hearts were sad. I was making up my mind, and father was making up his mind. At last I, being the younger and more impulsive, spoke:

"It is all right, Daddy," I said. "It was a bit of a dreadful shock; I don't pretend it was anything else. I have always put you -- oh, on such a pedestal! But I'll get used to it. You were tempted awfully, or you would never have done it. I am certain of that, and -- I have never been tempted at all, so, of course, I can't understand. You were tempted, poor darling, and it -- it happened. It is hateful of people to stamp on you, and crush you when you're down; but I suppose it is something horrid inside of them makes them do it. Daddy, I'm not made like that. I couldn't stamp on you -- I couldn't crush you. On the contrary, I have made up my mind. You and I against the world, Daddy mine, against the whole wide world. You won't return to London to-night; you'll stay here, and you'll write to Lady Helen, and you'll tell her that you and I have escaped from the worst prison, and are going to live always together, and that we aren't a bit afraid of poverty, and that, in short, we've made up our minds. We've cut the Gordian knot. We'll be happy together, and we don't care a scrap about poverty."