Max, if ever I am yours, altogether in your power, I wonder, will you ever give me those sort of bitter, cruel words? Words which people, living under the same roof, think nothing of using--mean nothing by them--yet they cut sharp, like swords. The flesh closes up after them--but oh, they bleed--they bleed! Dear Max, reprove me as you will, however much, but let it be in love, not in anger or sarcasm. Sometimes people drop carelessly, by quiet firesides, and with a good-night kiss following, as papa gave to me, words which leave a scar for years. Next day, I was just about to write and ask you to find some other plan for helping the Cartwrights, since we neither of us would choose to persist in one duty at the expense of another--when papa called me to take a walk with him. Is it not strange, the way in which good angels seem to take up the thread of our dropped hopes and endeavours, and wind them up for us, we see not how, till it is all done? Never was I more surprised than when papa, stopping to lean on my arm, and catch the warm, pleasant wind that came over the moors, said suddenly:-- "Dora, what could possess you to talk to me as you did last night? And why, if you had any definite scheme in your head, did you relinquish it so easily?" "Papa, you forbade it." "So, even when differing from your father, you consider it right to obey him?" "Yes,--except--" "Say it out, child." "Except in the case of any duty which I felt to be not less sacred than the one I owe to my father." He made no reply. Walking on, we passed Mrs. Cartwright's cottage. It was quiet and silent, the door open, but the window-shutter half closed, and there was no smoke from the chimney. I saw papa turn round and look. At last he said:-- "What did you mean by telling me they were 'starving?'" I answered the direct, entire truth. I was bold, for it was your mind as well as my own I was speaking out, and I knew it was right. I pleaded chiefly for the child--it was easiest to think of it, the little creature I had seen laughing and crowing in the garden at Kensington. It seemed such a dreadful thing for that helpless baby to die of want, or live to turn out a reprobate. "Think, papa," I cried, "if that poor little soul had been our own flesh and blood--if you were Francis's father, and this had been your grandchild!" To my sorrow, I had forgotten for the time a part of poor Harry's story--the beginning of it: you shall know it some day--it is all past now. But papa remembered it. He faltered as he walked--at last he sat down on a tree by the roadside, and said, "He must go home."