a word of this to anyone, but he had felt it. He had felt it for
years. Dear as she had been, she had not been quite what she
should have been but for that. And now this girl of his, who was
so much dearer to him than anything else left to him, was doing
exactly as her mother had done. The young man might be stamped
out. He might be made to vanish as that other young man had
vanished. But the fact that he had been there, cherished in the
girl's heart,--that could not be stamped out.

He struggled gallantly to acquit the memory of his wife. He could
best do that by leaning with the full weight of his mind on the
presumed iniquity of Mrs Finn. Had he not known from the first
that the woman was an adventuress? And had he not declared to
himself over and over again that between such a one and himself
there should be no intercourse, no common feeling? He had allowed
himself to be talked into an intimacy, to be talked into an
affection. And this was the result!

And how should he treat this matter in his coming interview with
his son,--or should he make allusion to it? At first it seemed as
though it would be impossible for him to give his mind to that
other subject. How could he enforce the merits of political
liberalism, and the duty of adhering to the old family party,
while his mind was entirely preoccupied with his daughter? It had
suddenly become almost indifferent to him whether Silverbridge
should be a Conservative or a Liberal. But as he dressed he told
himself, that, as a man, he ought to be able to do a plain duty,
marked out for him as this had been by his own judgement, without
regard to personal suffering. The hedger and ditcher must make his
hedge clean and clean his ditch even though he be tormented by