There is a dignity and there is an earnestness in a genuine spirit of truth which command belief and compel admiration. No sooner, therefore, did Sir Oliver first mention to Katharine what he had heard than she told him, with all plainness, in how sudden and unexpected a manner Francis and herself met. She told him in part what had passed between them, and excused herself for not telling him of the interview, by reminding him how very much the sight of her cousin’s name in the newspaper had discomposed and excited him; and how, in his own judgment, it had exasperated the symptoms of his disease. By these explanations the old knight was at once satisfied and quieted. Her remonstrance with Francis put aside at the moment all suspicion. At her particular request, he promised that Francis and his politics should be an interdicted name and a forbidden subject. But this resolution was soon broken; for when he heard that Milverton House was burnt down, for a fortnight the name was constantly on his lips, and was always coupled with the most angry and contemptuous language, if not by maledictions of a more fearful nature. At such moments, a sense of his own impotent condition, which forbade him to join the camp, would press upon his mind, till it produced paroxysms of frantic rage. By these temptations a temper less heavenly than that of Katharine’s would have been fretted into resistance and contention,--a faith less firm and exalted would have failed. But ever as the tempests of his mind subsided, Sir Oliver felt shame in her angelic presence. He could not indeed apprehend the high order of her mental force; but he could appreciate those solid principles of filial affection that enabled her to endure all things, to hope all things, and that replied to bitter words only by the kindest services, and by the most studious desires to content and cherish him. Through sickness, through pain, through greater reverses of fortune than they at first experienced,--under circumstances which compelled a great abridgement of all their ordinary comforts,--the daughter shone as if she had been some ministering spirit of love and patience, to whom a charge of peculiar difficulty had been assigned. Nor was this trial of her patience brief. It was not till the winter of 1647 that her chastised parent was removed from his scene of suffering and taken to his rest. The last two months of his existence were, however, marked by a change of temper and conduct very affecting to all who witnessed it; and this proved a reward and consolation to Katharine herself beyond all expectation. Hope, indeed, had never forsaken her; for her hope was ever anchored beneath the mercy seat of that Redeemer who is mighty to save. The old knight became gentle, penitent, tearful:--listened with earnestness to the word of life--was much in meditation--became tender as a little child--was full of thanksgiving and gratitude to his Christian daughter, and expired in her arms in peace.