'I know,' said Jessie, 'that I am the cause of this trouble, and I wish--oh, I wish!--that I had never come into the house! No, I don't wish it, for then I should never have known you!' She stood very humbly before my mother. 'I feel how ungrateful I am: to uncle Bryan for giving me a home'--(how these words stung me!)--'and to you for giving me a love of which I am so undeserving.' The tears came into her eyes, and I went towards her, but she moved a step from me; and thus apart from each other we four stood for a few moments in perfect silence--a house pulsing with love and tenderness, but divided against itself. Then Jessie said suddenly: 'Uncle Bryan, if I go to church this morning, will you come with us some time during the year?' 'No,' he replied sternly and firmly. 'I have asked you in the wrong way, perhaps,' she said; 'but that would not alter the thing itself.' 'Whichever way you asked me, my answer would have been the same, young lady.' 'If you tell me to go now, I will go.' 'I will tell you nothing. You are your own mistress.' 'How are the young to be taught, then, if the old will not teach them?' In the presence of my mother's distress he had no answer to make, and I felt that it was out of consideration for her, and not from any desire to spare himself, that he went into the shop and left us to ourselves. Then Jessie to my mother: 'I hope you will forgive me, but if I knew I should have died for it I could not have helped doing what I've done. Don't be grieved for me; I am not worth it. I am going to spend the morning with Miss West.' My mother and I went to church by ourselves; but I fear that my mood was not a very devout one. My mind was filled with what had taken place at home, and its probable consequences. CHAPTER XXVIII. COLOUR-BLIND. The consequences were more serious than any one of us could possibly have imagined, with the single exception of uncle Bryan; where we hoped, he reasoned, and reasoned with bitterness against himself. There are in the world a sort of men with whom you are for ever at a disadvantage--men who from various motives are strangely, and ofttimes cruelly, reticent as regards themselves, their thoughts, and their actions. These men receive your confidences, but do not confide in you in return; they listen to your schemes, your hopes, your fears, but say not a word concerning their own. You wear your heart upon your sleeve; they lock up theirs jealously, and place upon them an impenetrable seal, which perhaps once or twice in a lifetime they remove--perhaps never. Uncle Bryan was one of these men. Scarcely by a look had he ever shown us his heart, and it required a nature not only more noble and generous, but more self-sacrificing, than mine not to misjudge him--to be even tolerant of him.