When Martha entered the library, Harry lounging in the window-seat, was languidly turning over a paper. He, poor Harry! was little less excited than they were, and heats and chills came over him, and his eye fell under Martha’s mother eye; but the second nature which had risen like a cloud over that boy’s heart which still moved within him, made him stubborn and defiant still. When she came in, he threw down his paper with a slight start, as of impatience; and turning to her, rapidly asked: “Well, Martha, what have you to say to me?” “Am I to have liberty to say it, Harry?” “What folly to ask me such a question,” said Harry, angrily. “Does my sister need to make a formal affair of it, like this, when she has anything to say to me? Sit down, Martha, and don’t look as if you came to school me; I may not be able to bear _that_ very patiently, and I should be sorry to hurt you. Sit down, and tell me what it is?” Martha sat down with gathering coldness upon her face--coldness of the face alone, a mask to hide very different emotions. “I come to-day while you are full master of yourself, and are alone,” she said, with slow and deliberate emphasis--Harry did not know that she compelled herself to speak so, lest the burning tide of other words should pour forth against her will--“to answer a question you asked yesterday. You desired to know what your neighbours meant by ceasing to seek you; Harry, I wish to tell you what they mean.” Harry looked at her for a moment, as if about to speak, but rapidly turning away eyes which could not meet the steady gravity of hers, he took up his paper, and without looking at it, played with it in his hand. “They mean,” proceeded Martha, slowly, “that they do not choose to extend the courtesies of ordinary life to one who scorns and never seeks, the ordinary respect which is every man’s right who lives without outward offence against God or man; they mean that they cannot pretend to honour what you have set yourself to disgrace; they mean that the name, the house, the family, which you can resign for the meanest of earthly pleasures, have no claim of special regard upon them. Your life is known in every peasant’s house; they talk of you at the firesides of your labourers: they say, poor Allenders, and tell each other how you are led away--Harry! I ask you what right you have to be led away? You tell me you are not a child, and will not bear to be schooled by me. What right have you, a man--a man, Harry--to suffer any other man to lead you into evil? And this is what your neighbours mean.” Harry dashed the paper from him in sudden passion. “And what right have you--what right have you? Martha, I have borne much: what right have you to speak to me in such words as these?”