“Look here, Jim. I have not kept my eyes shut all my life, and this is what I have seen—many unsuccessful professional ‘gentlemen and ladies,’ who have not talent enough to climb where ‘there is more room higher up,’ or even to keep their footing on the level where they were born, but yet who will struggle, slip, flounder, suffer and sin where they are rather than take a step ‘lower down,’ as they would consider it, but where there is also ‘more room.’” “I don’t quite follow you, Hetty.” “This is what I mean: Take an illustration. A man may be an unsuccessful lawyer, but his knowledge of law would make him so much better a clerk that his chances of employment in that capacity would be much greater than those of other competitors. Another man may fail as a minister, but he might make all the better schoolmaster. A woman may fail as a teacher, but succeed as a nurse. And what I would both inculcate and practice is this: That when man or woman fails in the line of life they have been born into or chosen for themselves, and when they have neither the power to rise above the level or to keep their footing upon it, let them not give up in despair or struggle in vain, but step frankly down to an humbler and honester position. There is always some work of some sort to be got. He who said ‘Six days shalt thou labor’ will give work to every hand willing to take it, though it may not be the kind of work their pride would like best. As for me and my daughter, whatever our ‘hands find to do, we will do it with our might,’ whether we like it or not.” “But, my dear, do you really not care about leaving this beautiful home?” “Under the circumstances, I should not care to stay, even if we could. Should you? Reflect. The new squire will be here in a few days. You will have to denounce him as an impostor, a fraudulent claimant, a bigamous bridegroom. But it would take time to prove these charges. Could you stay in the parish and preach in the church during that time with any sort of peace to us all? No. Better that we should go away, and the sooner we go the better.” “My dear, I shall easily prove the fellow to be a bigamist; but as his crime was committed in the United States of America, I cannot prosecute him for it here in England. Neither can I prove him to be a fraudulent claimant. I have been turning that matter over in my mind, and I do not even know that he is one.” “What!” exclaimed Hetty with wide-open eyes. “You do not know him to be a fraudulent claimant when you know that his name is Kightly Montgomery, and that he calls himself Randolph Hay?” “See here, my love. I know nothing of the conditions of inheritance that rule this estate. I know nothing of the history of the family or their intermarriages with other families. How should I, coming here a stranger from the south of England?”