and of her fine figure, I began:—­She was to consider how young she was to pretend to decide on the balance of duties, how little of the world she had seen; an oath sworn at the bedside of the dead was a solemn thing, but was it Christian to keep it to do an unnecessary cruelty to the living? if she had not studied philosophy, she might at least discern the difference between just resolves and insane—­between those the soul sanctioned, and those hateful to nature; to bind oneself to carry on another person’s vindictiveness was voluntarily to adopt slavery; this was flatly-avowed insanity, and so forth, with an emphatic display of patience.

The truth of my words could not be controverted.  Unhappily I confounded right speaking with right acting, and conceived, because I spoke so justly, that I was specially approved in pressing her to yield.

She broke the first pause to say, ’It’s useless, Harry.  I do what I think I am bound to do.’

‘Then I have spoken to no purpose!’

‘If you will only be kind, and wait two or three days?’

‘Be sensible!’

‘I am, as much as I can be.’

’Hard as a flint—­you always were!  The most grateful woman alive, I admit.  I know not another, I assure you, Janet, who, in return for millions of money, would do such a piece of wanton cruelty.  What!  You think he was not punished enough when he was berated and torn to shreds in your presence?  They would be cruel, perhaps—­we will suppose it of your sex—­but not so fond of their consciences as to stamp a life out to keep an oath.  I forget the terms of the Will.  Were you enjoined in it to force him away?’

My father had stationed himself in the background.  Mention of the Will caught his ears, and he commenced shaking my aunt Dorothy’s note, blinking and muttering at a great rate, and pressing his temples.

‘I do not read a word of this,’ he said,—­’upon my honour, not a word; and I know it is her handwriting.  That Will!—­only, for the love of heaven, madam,’—­he bowed vaguely to Janet ’not a syllable of this to the princess, or we are destroyed.  I have a great bell in my head, or I would say more.  Hearing is out of the question.’

Janet gazed piteously from him to me.

To kill the deer and be sorry for the suffering wretch is common.

I begged my father to walk along the carriage-drive.  He required that the direction should be pointed out accurately, and promptly obeyed me, saying:  ’I back you, remember.  I should certainly be asleep now but for this extraordinary bell.’  After going some steps, he turned to shout ‘Gong,’ and touched his ear.  He walked loosely, utterly unlike the walk habitual to him even recently in Paris.

‘Has he been ill?’ Janet asked.

’He won’t see the doctor; the symptoms threaten apoplexy or paralysis, I ’m told.  Let us finish.  You were aware that you were to inherit Riversley?’