“Patrick needed no curbing in the past. He left easily enough, the first time and we have hardly seen him for.” This time, he had been old enough to satisfy his lust. Once that had been done he had left again, without so much as a thought to the possibility of issue.
“That was a different thing entirely,” her father said, and with a resolute nod, “As though the past was settled full striving to considerable effort on my part to get him away from you.”
She could not have heard it right. Patrick had said nothing of her father, in any of this. If he was not at fault then why had he not said so? “You were the reason for his departure,” she said, hoping that he would correct himself.
Her father looked embarrassed. “It was well past the time that you were separated. He had been too long in
