My mother crept to my side, but I was not to be turned from my purpose. I could hear and feel the rapid beating of her heart against my hand, which she had taken in hers and pressed to her bosom, but the selfish intensity of my own grief made me deaf and blind to everything else. Uncle Bryan did not answer me; he strove feebly to pass me again, but I prevented him from doing so. Something in my attitude caused Josey West to place herself between us. 'I hope you are satisfied,' I said. 'You have driven her from us. What is the next thing you intend to do?' I paused for his reply, but he did not speak. 'I intended to ask Jessie to-night to be my wife. I don't know what her answer would have been, but I think I know what it might have been but for your systematic cruelty. Will it add to your satisfaction to know that I had set all my hopes of happiness upon her, and that you have driven these from my heart, as you have driven her from your door? I loved her with all my soul. I was not worthy of her; she is far above me and every one here; but I loved her most truly and sincerely, and you have stepped between us and parted us for ever. Does it please you to be assured of this?----Nay, mother, I will speak. I have been silent until now, out of my love for you, and because I knew that you had given even him a place in your tender heart. He has requited you nobly for it. If I had spoken openly before now, things might have been different, but I held my tongue, like a coward, and because I had some latent notion that he deserved respect from me. I think so no longer. On my last birthday,' I continued, addressing him, 'you gave me certain advice which I believed to be good; among other things you said that it is seldom a man can look back upon his life with satisfaction. You drew that from your own experience. With what kind of satisfaction do you look back upon your own life? A man with any tenderness for others in his nature would shrink with horror from the contemplation of such a life as yours. But perhaps you find it a pleasant task to blight the hopes and happiness of those who have the misfortune to come in contact with you. Having no children of your own upon whom you could practise in this way, you turned your attention to others, and you have succeeded most thoroughly. You said to me, when I was of age, that I was a man, with a man's responsibility, and a man's work to do, and you bade me do it faithfully. I have tried to do it--my mother knows that, and so does Miss West, I think--in the hope that it would lead to a good result. But when you addressed those words to me, did you think of yourself, and the example of your own life? They sounded well, but did you think of your own responsibility--or did you think that _you_, apart from all other men in the world, had no responsibility which it behoved you to look to? You brought Jessie here, a friendless, helpless girl--a girl whom nobody but you could help loving for the goodness that is in