"Is it not my _business_ to care for the _life and soul_ of a dear sister who has no _mother's love_? Am I not right when I fall on my _knees_ to pray for her _welfare_? How could I _enjoy_ the good of this life or the hopes of _another_, knowing that my sister is _eating_ the _bread of wickedness_ and drinking from the _cup of sin_? Shall the watchman desert his post because the _soldier sleeps_? "_Ask yourself_ why no person except the hireling tradesman ever _visits_ at this _house_ of luxury and _extravagance_, which your husband makes the prison-house of _your soul_. "Ask yourself what is the fountain of this gold which he spends so shamelessly. "Ask yourself, dear Psyche, what you would have said _two years ago_ had any one told you that _you_ should become the wife of a _counterfeiter_ or a _forger_ or a _gambler_ or a _keeper of a dance-house_ or a _detective_, or any other of those horrid things which are done in _secret_. If any one had said to you that you should have _pleasure_ in those that do them, what would you _have said_? O my _dear lost lamb_, how often has that _sweet_ text (see Romans i. 32) come back to me since I came to see you, in the _faint hope_ that I might rescue my _lamb_ even as a brand from the _burning_! My dear Psyche, will you not _turn_ before it is _too late_? _Why will you die_? "Thus asks and _prays_ your own "PRISCILLA." "My own cat and dog!" said little Psyche scornfully. But she did not put the letter into the fire, nor did she tear it to shreds to throw them into the sea. I am very sorry; but, even in her wonder, she kept the letter hid away. "What in the world did they find out about Edward that I do not know?" This was the first fatal question which Psyche asked herself. "Forger, counterfeiter, detective, gambler--what do the vile creatures mean? They shall not say such horrid things about the best of men!" "Ask yourself what is the fountain of this gold." Psyche had asked herself very often, and she did not know, and she knew she did not know. Edward was not lavish, and he was not parsimonious. She and he went over the bills together once a month, and when they were too large, they both took care that that should not happen again. And he gave her nice crisp bills to pay them with, and always gave her a separate sum for "P," which he said was her "private, personal, or peculiar share," which she had better not keep any account of. Where it all came from she did not know, and she knew she did not know; and she had promised not to ask him.