in me. I want you to save me from it before I grow any worse. You must take
back the money. It did one good thing: it paid those selfish debts of mine,
and it made mother well. What has been spent I will work for and pay back
as I can. But I love _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there."

"This is the language of sheer insanity, Daphne, of mental excitement that
passes reason." Mr. Withers spoke in a carefully controlled but quivering
voice--as a man who has been struck an unexpected and staggering blow,
but considering the quarter it came from, is prepared to treat it as an
accident. "The facts, John's own words in his last letter to me, cannot be
gainsaid. 'I am coming home to you, dad, and to whom else I need not say.
You know that I have never changed, but she has changed, God bless her!
How well He made them, to be our thorn, our spur, our punishment, our
prevention, and sometimes our cure! I am coming home to be cured,' he said.
You have not forgotten the words of that letter, dear? I sent it to you,
but first--I thought you would not mind--I copied those, his last words.
They were words of such happiness; and they implied a thought, at least, of
his Creator, if not that grounded faith"--

"They were hopes, only hopes!" the girl remorsefully disclaimed. "I allowed
him to have them because I wanted time to make up my wretched, selfish
mind. I had never made him a single promise, never said one word that could
give me the right to pose as I did afterwards, to let myself be grieved
over as if I had lost my last hope on earth. I had his money all safe
enough."

"Daphne, I forbid you to speak in that tone! There are bounds even to
confession. If you think well to degrade yourself by such allusions, do not
degrade me by forcing me to listen to you. This is a subject too sacred to
be discussed in its mercenary bearings; settle that question with yourself