Free Coming Through the Rye by Grace Livingston Hill

suffer—”
    â€œDon’t!”
she said so sharply this time that he started as if she had struck him.
    â€œOf course!” said he. “I am a fool! I should have kept my mouth shut. I am only making things worse. But at least you will let me do something for you. I could send for anyone you want.”
    She swept him with a silencing glance.
    â€œIt is too late!” she said significantly, and then with a little despairing gasp like a suppressed moan, “and it would not have mattered anyway, of course. But oh, won’t you
go
now? Haven’t you done all the awful things you had to do? Couldn’t I be alone?”
    He took one determined step toward the door and then paused, hesitating and looking up the stairs.
    â€œI see,” she said with a tired voice, “you have to remain on guard. Never mind. If you will just let me alone till you are allowed to go, and if you will try and manage it so that I will never have to see you again if possible, I shall be very much obliged. You are anxious to help me. Do that if you please.”
    He stood looking straight at her sorrowfully for a moment. She had risen now and was looking straight and coldly at him. She seemed like a little sinking thing that was begging him to let her sink, and he stood trying to see a way out of it. Some strong emotion swept over his fine young face and passed.
    â€œVery well,” he said quietly, and looked at her again, thinking rapidly. “Very well, I will—on one condition, that you will let me know if there is any way in which I could help you.”
    â€œThere would never be any way!” She held her hand sorrowfully high. “I have friends.”
    He was still again for a moment and then said slowly, as if realizing a new phase of her situation, “Of course—yet—if there
should
come a time when there was no one else who could help—I will do anything in my power for you—or your father—or brother!”
    â€œThere is always God,” said Romayne briefly, and, turning, left him without a look, holding her head high and walking up the stairs with brave steps.
    He watched her go, a gallant little figure with the look of wreck upon her, yet a spirit that would not surrender.
    She took up her position outside her father’s bedroom door as if she intended to stand right there for hours if it were necessary, standing by till time passed and she was needed. She did not glance downstairs where the tall young officer stood guard. If she must bear her anguish thus in the eyes of a stranger, she would at least ignore his presence. She wanted him to know that henceforth for her he no longer existed. It was the only possible way in which she could go on and live. And live she must for her father’s sake. He might have done wrong, but he was her father still and needed her all the more if he had done wrong. She could not make it seem real that he had knowingly broken the law or put himself under its power. There must be some explanation by which others were to blame, and her father had been deceived about the business somehow, and thought he was carrying on a legitimate affair. That didn’t seem reasonable, either, after all that she had seen. Her father was not one easily deceived. Well, this was not the time to reason terrible possibilities out to a logical end, not while her father lay between life and death, a world that must have misjudged him! Her work now was to watch by that door and pray.
    As she stood there trembling through what seemed hours, although in reality it was but minutes, her mind was fixed on the memory of the white drawn face of her father. She seemed to see like a panorama the scene upon which he had entered, the chalky face of Lawrence appearing an instant and then gone!
Lawrence!
What part had he in it all? Had it anything to do with his staying out late nights, and his surly air at the table of late? And those lines that had been etching