"Not a word! If, in your disobedience, you choose to stay and hear what no modest young woman would put herself in the way of hearing, you shall be silent when I bid you. The only good you can gain is in the way of warning. Look at that woman" (indicating Ruth, who moved her drooping head a little on one side, as if by such motion she could avert the pitiless pointing--her face growing whiter and whiter still every instant)--"look at that woman, I say--corrupt long before she was your age--hypocrite for years! If ever you, or any child of mine, cared for her, shake her off from you, as St Paul shook off the viper--even into the fire." He stopped for very want of breath. Jemima, all flushed and panting, went up and stood side by side with wan Ruth. She took the cold, dead hand which hung next to her in her warm convulsive grasp, and holding it so tight that it was blue and discoloured for days, she spoke out beyond all power of restraint from her father. "Father, I will speak. I will not keep silence. I will bear witness to Ruth. I have hated her--so keenly, may God forgive me! but you may know, from that, that my witness is true. I have hated her, and my hatred was only quenched into contempt--not contempt now, dear Ruth--dear Ruth"--(this was spoken with infinite softness and tenderness, and in spite of her father's fierce eyes and passionate gesture)--"I heard what you have learnt now, father, weeks and weeks ago--a year it may be, all time of late has been so long; and I shuddered up from her and from her sin; and I might have spoken of it, and told it there and then, if I had not been afraid that it was from no good motive I should act in so doing, but to gain a way to the desire of my own jealous heart. Yes, father, to show you what a witness I am for Ruth, I will own that I was stabbed to the heart with jealousy; some one--some one cared for Ruth that--oh, father! spare me saying all." Her face was double-dyed with crimson blushes, and she paused for one moment--no more. "I watched her, and I watched her with my wild-beast eyes. If I had seen one paltering with duty--if I had witnessed one flickering shadow of untruth in word or action--if, more than all things, my woman's instinct had ever been conscious of the faintest speck of impurity in thought, or word, or look, my old hate would have flamed out with the flame of hell! my contempt would have turned to loathing disgust, instead of my being full of pity, and the stirrings of new-awakened love, and most true respect. Father, I have borne my witness!"