'Why not? I am not wise, I know, and I am very wilful, and passionate, and unreasonable.' She resolutely moved a step from my mother, who was approaching her tenderly. 'But I have sense enough to think of my future, and I do not see what I could do better. I have been acting for a long time at Miss West's; we have often had little private performances there--Chris has seen them.' There was grief, but no reproach, in my mother's eyes as she looked at me. 'When I first commenced to act, I did it purely out of fun, and I had no serious intention of taking to the stage; but when I grew so unhappy here as to know that I was bringing discord among those who loved each other, and to whom I was in a certain sense a stranger, and when day after day the feeling grew stronger that I was not welcome in this house, I thought of what was before me in the future. It must be very sweet, I think, to be dependent upon those who love you; it is very bitter, I know, to be dependent upon those who hate you.' 'Stop!' cried uncle Bryan, in an agitated tone. 'I say nothing as to whether you are right or wrong in your construction of the feelings entertained towards you here. You are a woman in your ideas, although almost a child in years, and you have evidently settled with yourself that you will not be led----' 'Who is to lead me?' said Jessie, pale and trembling. 'I have asked to be led, and _you_ know the result. Not quite out of hard-heartedness, but with some shadow of good feeling--though perhaps you will not give me credit for being capable of anything of the sort--I have asked to be shown what is right and what is wrong; and if I, somewhat wilfully, preferred to be shown by example and not by words, was I so very much to blame, after all?' 'You are clever enough,' he said, 'to twist things into the shape you like best----' 'No,' she exclaimed, interrupting him again; 'be just. You know what I refer to, and you know I have spoken exactly the truth. Do not say I have misrepresented it.' 'I beg your pardon,' he said, in a manly tone, and with a frankness which compelled admiration. I was wrong. You have stated exactly the truth, and in a truthful way. But if you really wished to be taught, what better teacher could you have than the one before you?'--with a motion of his hand towards my mother--'if you had doubts, where could you find a better counsellor?' 'You are master,' said Jessie, firmly and gently; 'you gave me shelter and protection. Chris reminded me of that a little while ago when we were speaking of you, and I was angry with him for it--unreasonably angry. It is not to be wondered at that I should look to you for counsel.' 'If there were two roads before you,' he said, 'one, dark and bleak and bare'--he touched his breast'--the other, fair and bright and sweetened by most unselfish tenderness'--he laid his hand upon the hand of my mother--'which would you choose?'