“I would do much, very much, for you and for your father, Bride; but I cannot, even for you, be untrue to myself, and to the cause of suffering humanity. The woes of our brethren are crying aloud for redress. Christianity and humanity are alike disgraced by the scenes which are daily enacted in this Christian land. Believe me, Bride, you and I are nearer in heart than you are able yet to see. You have lived your life in this peaceful spot, and know little or nothing of the fearful abuses which stalk rampant through the land. Did you know what I know, had you seen what I have seen, you would know that I am embarked upon a righteous cause, and that the power you call God--which is in very truth the spirit of justice, mercy, and true and lasting peace--is with us. I do not deny that, in stirring up men’s hearts, even in a righteous cause, evil and selfish passions are too often inevitably stirred also. Human nature finds it all but impossible to hate the abuse without hating those who in their eyes at least are the living embodiment of that abuse. We have a twofold mission to execute--to rouse in men a hatred of evil and oppression, whilst at the same time striving to inculcate patience towards those who appear to them to be the incarnation of that evil. The one task is of course easier at the outset than the other; but we do not despair of accomplishing both. No reformation of abuses was ever yet made without the stirring up of evil passions--without many and great dangers and mistakes; yet the world has been better, and purer, and wiser for these same reforms, and so it will be again. Ah! Bride, my beautiful cousin, we want noble-hearted women to aid us in the task. If we men can rouse the slumbering to claim the rights of humanity for themselves, you women can pour oil on troubled waters, and instil gentle and tender feelings into rude hearts that we find it hard to subdue. If you would walk hand in hand with me in this thing, Bride, how much might not be accomplished for Penarvon and those poor benighted people in whom your own interest is so keen! Bride, will you not let it be so? Will you not help me? Will you not help a cause which is pledged to raise the people of this land from misery and degradation, and teach them that even for them there is a higher and a better life, if they will but strive and attain to it?” The girl’s eyes were fixed upon his face in one of her inscrutable gazes, in which she seemed to be looking him through and through, and reading his very soul, whilst hers was to him as a sealed book. “Ah! Eustace,” she said very softly, “would that you _were_ striving to teach to them the true meaning of the higher life. Then, indeed, would I most gladly, most willingly, follow where you lead; but, alas, alas! I fear me it is not so. Oh, my cousin, can you truly tell me that you yourself are striving after the higher life--the highest life--the life of the Kingdom--so that you can teach it to another?”