in time--they may make the ordeal as terrible as hell itself. You have
zeal--have you nerve?' I thought in such a cause I had nerve for anything.

'Well, Maud, in the course of a few months--and it may be sooner--there
must be a change. I have had a letter from London this morning that assures
me of that. I must then leave you for a time; in my absence be faithful to
the duties that will arise. To whom much is committed, of him will much be
required. You shall promise me not to mention this conversation to Monica
Knollys. If you are a talking girl, and cannot trust yourself, say so, and
we will not ask her to come. Also, don't invite her to talk about your
uncle Silas--I have reasons. Do you quite understand my conditions?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Your uncle Silas,' he said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones
that sounded from so old a man almost terrible, 'lies under an intolerable
slander. I don't correspond with him; I don't sympathise with him; I never
quite did. He has grown religious, and that's well; but there are things in
which even religion should not bring a man to acquiesce; and from what
I can learn, he, the person primarily affected--the cause, though the
innocent cause--of this great calamity--bears it with an easy apathy which
is mistaken, and liable easily to be mistaken, and such as no Ruthyn, under
the circumstances, ought to exhibit. I told him what he ought to do, and
offered to open my purse for the purpose; but he would not, or _did_ not;
indeed, he _never_ took my advice; he followed his own, and a foul and
dismal shoal he has drifted on. It is not for his sake--why should I?-that
I have longed and laboured to remove the disgraceful slur under which
his ill-fortune has thrown us. He troubles himself little about it, I
believe--he's meek, meeker than I. He cares less about his children than I
about you, Maud; he is selfishly sunk in futurity--a feeble visionary. I am