“Oh, Mr. Gilchrist!” the enforced monotony of her tone wavering into a cry of pain—“I think _that_ is the worst of all! When I recollect my mother’s pure religion—when I see your mother’s beneficent life and firm faith in goodness and in God—when I know that, in spite of the seeming untruthfulness which is, she thinks, necessary to protect her husband—my sister holds fast to her love and trust in an Almighty Friend, and walks humbly with her God, I feel such indignation against a man who is the slave of passion, selfish, vain, and conscienceless, and yet assumes to show such souls the way to heaven, that I dare not enter the church where he is allowed to preach, lest I should cry out in the face of his hearers against the monstrous cheat!” Her eyes flamed clear; the torrent of feeling swept away reserve and coldness. “I understand!” March said, with sympathetic warmth. “You never disappoint me. Tell me what I can do to help you. I cannot let you endure all this alone any longer.” “Nobody can take my share of the burden. I would hardly know myself without it. It will be the heavier for my sister’s distress and Hester’s anger when they hear what I have decided to do. Hester was on her way over to your house when you met her, full of news she could not wait until to-morrow to tell. My mother’s only brother went to Japan thirty years ago and became rich. He died last March, leaving most of his fortune to benevolent institutions in America. To each of us, his sister’s children, he bequeathed ten thousand dollars. It is not a fortune, but with our modest tastes, and when joined to the little I already have, it will support us decently. My first thought, when the news reached us, a week ago, was ‘Now, Mr. Wayt need never take another charge! We need not live upon tainted food!’” “You are a noble woman, Hetty——” She interrupted him. “I am not! This is not self-sacrifice, but self-preservation. If the money had not been given to us, I must have found some way out of a false position. I want you to tell your father all you know. Keep back nothing I have told you. He is a good and a merciful man. Let him speak openly to Mr. Wayt and forbid him ever to enter the pulpit again upon penalty of public exposure and suspension from the ministry. What Judge Gilchrist says will have weight. With all his high looks and sounding talk, Mr. Wayt is a coward. He would not venture to resist the decision. Then we will go away quietly. I have thought of the little town in which my sister and I were born. Living is cheap there and there are excellent schools for the children. Twenty-five thousand dollars will go very far in that region, and we can be honest people once more.” “You have arranged it all, have you?” said March, not at all in the tone she had expected to hear. “Give them the cheap town, and the good schools, and the twenty-five thousand dollars by all means. They can have everything but _you_!” CHAPTER X.