The poor father shrank back. Perhaps he knew, by sad experience, that Aunt Henrietta's condemnation was not altogether without foundation. His look expressed such unutterable pain that Christian came forward and spoke out strongly, almost angrily. "It is fear that makes a liar, even as harshness and injustice create deceit and underhandedness. Love a child and trust it, and if it does wrong, punish it neither cruelly nor unfairly, and it will never tell falsehoods. Titia will not--she shall not, as long as I am alive to keep her to the truth." Dr. Grey looked fondly at his wile's young, glowing face and even Miss Gascoigne, the hard, worldly woman, viewing all things in her narrow, worldly way, was silenced for the time. Then she began again, pouring out a torrent of explanations and self-exculpations, which soon resolved themselves into the simple question, What was to be done? There--she ended. "Don't ask me to do any thing. I will not. I wash my hands of the whole matter. If the story be true, and Miss Bennett can be guilty of conduct so indecorous, it would never do for me to be mixed up in such an improper proceeding and if untrue, and I accused her of it, I should find myself in a very unpleasant position. So, Mrs. Grey, since you have interfered in this matter, you must carry it out on your own responsibility. If you have taken a grudge against Miss Bennett--which I did not expect, considering your own antecedents--you must just do as you like concerning her. But, bless me! how the evening is slipping by. Come, Maria, I shall hardly have time to dress for the vice chancellor's." So saying, Miss Gascoigne swept away, her silk skirts flowing behind her. Aunt Maria followed with one pathetic glance at "dear Arnold;" and the husband and wife were left alone. Dr. Grey threw himself into his arm-chair, and there came across his face the weary look, which Christian had of late learned to notice, indicating that he was no more a young man, and that his life had been longer in trials than even in years. "My dear, I wish you women-kind could settle these domestic troubles among yourselves. We men have so many outside worries to contend with. It is rather hard." It was hard. Christian reproached herself almost as if she had been the primary cause of this, the first complaint she had ever heard him make, and which he seemed immediately to regret having allowed to escape him. "I don't mean, my dear wife, that you should not have told me this; indeed, it was impossible to keep it from me. It all springs from Aunt Henrietta. I wish she--But she is Aunt Henrietta, and we must just make the best of her, as I have done for nearly twenty years."