“You mistake me.  That is not the difficulty at all.  Of course you ought to do what is right against the highest authority on earth, which I take to be just the parental.  What I am surprised at is your courage.”

“Not because of its degree, only that it is mine!”

And she sighed.—­She was quite right, and I did not know what to answer.  But she resumed.

“I know I am cowardly.  But if I cannot dare, I can bear.  Is it not strange?—­With my mother looking at me, I dare not say a word, dare hardly move against her will.  And it is not always a good will.  I cannot honour my mother as I would.  But the moment her eyes are off me, I can do anything, knowing the consequences perfectly, and just as regardless of them; for, as I tell you, Mr Walton, I can endure; and you do not know what that might come to mean with my mother.  Once she kept me shut up in my room, and sent me only bread and water, for a whole week to the very hour.  Not that I minded that much, but it will let you know a little of my position in my own home.  That is why I walked away before her.  I saw what was coming.”

And Miss Oldcastle drew herself up with more expression of pride than I had yet seen in her, revealing to me that perhaps I had hitherto quite misunderstood the source of her apparent haughtiness.  I could not reply for indignation.  My silence must have been the cause of what she said next.

“Ah! you think I have no right to speak so about my own mother!  Well! well!  But indeed I would not have done so a month ago.”

“If I am silent, Miss Oldcastle, it is that my sympathy is too strong for me.  There are mothers and mothers.  And for a mother not to be a mother is too dreadful.”

She made no reply.  I resumed.

“It will seem cruel, perhaps;—­certainly in saying it, I lay myself open to the rejoinder that talk is so easy;—­still I shall feel more honest when I have said it:  the only thing I feel should be altered in your conduct—­forgive me—­is that you should dare your mother.  Do not think, for it is an unfortunate phrase, that my meaning is a vulgar one.  If it were, I should at least know better than to utter it to you.  What I mean is, that you ought to be able to be and do the same before your mother’s eyes, that you are and do when she is out of sight.  I mean that you should look in your mother’s eyes, and do what is right.”

“I know that—­know it well.” (She emphasized the words as I do.) “But you do not know what a spell she casts upon me; how impossible it is to do as you say.”

“Difficult, I allow.  Impossible, not.  You will never be free till you do so.”

“You are too hard upon me.  Besides, though you will scarcely be able to believe it now, I do honour her, and cannot help feeling that by doing as I do, I avoid irreverence, impertinence, rudeness—­whichever is the right word for what I mean.”