“That man played with Hetty’s feelings, and behaved to her as he’d no right to do to a girl in her station o’ life—­made her presents and used to go and meet her out a-walking.  I found it out only two days before he went away—­found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.  There’d been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I’d loved her for a long while, and she knew it.  But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o’ flirting.  But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty he’d meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn’t understood at the time, as he’d got hold of her heart, and I thought she’d belike go on thinking of him and never come to love another man as wanted to marry her.  And I gave her the letter, and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I’d expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn’t know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too late...I don’t want to blame her...I can’t think as she meant to deceive me.  But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and—­you know the rest, sir.  But it’s on my mind as he’s been false to me, and ’ticed her away, and she’s gone to him—­and I’m going now to see, for I can never go to work again till I know what’s become of her.”

During Adam’s narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him.  It was a bitter remembrance to him now—­that morning when Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession.  It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess.  And if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man’s secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery.  He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past.  But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him—­already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have feared it.  His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must inflict on Adam was already present to him.  Again he put his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said solemnly: 

“Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life.  You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully.  God requires both tasks at our hands.  And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known.  But you are not guilty—­you have not the worst of all sorrows.  God help him who has!”