He's perhaps gone to pay a visit at the Three
Crowns, by Whitbridge- I know he's fond of the house.'
'Perhaps he is,' said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing
himself, he said, with an effort at carelessness, 'We shall hear of
him soon enough, I'll be bound.'
'Well, here's my turning,' said Bryce, not surprised to perceive
that Godfrey was rather 'down'; 'so I'll bid you good day, and wish
I may bring you better news another time.'
Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of
confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no
longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the
very next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be
sure to come back shortly, and finding that he must bear the brunt
of his father's anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even
though he had nothing to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by
which he might still win Dunstan's silence and put off the evil day:
he might tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to
him by Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an offence
before, the affair would blow over after a little storming. But
Godfrey could not bend himself to this. He felt that in letting
Dunstan have the money, he had already been guilty of a breach of
trust hardly less culpable than that of spending the money directly
for his own behoof; and yet there was a distinction between the two
acts which made him feel that the one was so much more blackening than
the other as to be intolerable to him.
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