'No, he fell in,' said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as
if he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: 'Dunstan
was the man that robbed Silas Marner.'
The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and
shame, for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship
with crime as a dishonour.
'Oh, Godfrey!' she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had
immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more
keenly by her husband.
'There was the money in the pit,' he continued- 'all the weaver's
money. Everything's being gathered up, and they're taking the skeleton
to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was no hindering
it; you must know.'
He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy
would have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she
refrained, from an instinctive sense that there was something
behind- that Godfrey had something else to tell her. Presently he
lifted his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as he said:
'Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God
Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. I've lived with a secret
on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't have you
know it by somebody else, and not by me- I wouldn't have you find it
out after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been "I will" and "I
won't" with me all my life- I'll make sure of myself now.
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