"No, Mary; nothing on earth shall ever induce me to set my eyes on him again willingly. He has destroyed all the world for me. He should have had half of it without a word. When he used to whine to me in his letters, and say how cruelly he had been treated, I always made up my mind that he should have half the income for life. It was because he should not want till I came home that I enabled him to do what he has done. And now he has robbed me of every cursed shilling! I wonder whether I shall ever get my mind free from it." "Of course you will." "It seems now that my heart is wrapped in lead." As they were coming home she put her hand upon his arm, and asked him to promise her to withdraw that threat. "Why should I withdraw it? Who cares for me?" "We all care. My aunt cares. I care." "The threat means nothing, Mary. People who make such threats don't carry them out. Of course I shall go on and endure it. The worst of all is, that the whole thing makes me so unmanly,--makes such a beast of me. But I'll try to get over it." Mary Lowther thought that, upon the whole, he bore his misfortune very well. CHAPTER XIV. COUSINHOOD. Mary Lowther and her cousin had taken their walk together on Monday evening, and on the next morning she received the following letter from Mrs. Fenwick. When it reached her she had as yet heard nothing of the Bullhampton tragedy. Vicarage, Monday, Sept. 1, 186--. DEAREST MARY, I suppose you will have heard before you get this of the dreadful murder that has taken place here, and which has so startled and horrified us, that we hardly know what we are doing even yet. It is hard to say why a thing should be worse because it is close, but it certainly is so. Had it been in the next parish, or even further off in this parish, I do not think that I should feel it so much, and then we knew the old man so well; and then, again,--which makes it worst of all,--we all of us are unable to get rid of a suspicion that one whom we knew, and was liked, has been a participator in the crime.