She drew aside slightly. She had steeled herself for this inevitable interview, and there was no weakening of her defences; but a great sadness came into her eyes, and spread over her face, and to this was added, after a moment, a pity which showed the distance she was from him, the safety in which she stood. “I remember that the garden was beautiful, and that thee spoke as though thee was part of the garden. Thee remembers that, at our meeting in the Cloistered House, when the woman was ill, I had no faith in thee; but thee spoke with grace, and turned common things round about, so that they seemed different to the ear from any past hearing; and I listened. I did not know, and I do not know now, why it is my duty to shun any of thy name, and above all thyself; but it has been so commanded by my father all my life; and though what he says may be in a little wrong, in much it must ever be right.” “And so, from a hatred handed down, your mind has been tuned to shun even when your heart was learning to give me a home--Faith?” She straightened herself. “Friend, thee will do me the courtesy to forget to use my Christian name. I am not a child-indeed, I am well on in years”--he smiled--“and thee has no friendship or kinship for warrant. If my mind was tuned to shun thee, I gave proof that it was willing to take thee at thine own worth, even against the will of my father, against the desire of David, who knew thee better than I--he gauged thee at first glance.” “You have become a philosopher and a statesman,” he said ironically. “Has your nephew, the new Joseph in Egypt, been giving you instructions in high politics? Has he been writing the Epistles of David to the Quakers?” “Thee will leave his name apart,” she answered with dignity. “I have studied neither high politics nor statesmanship, though in the days when thee did flatter me thee said I had a gift for such things. Thee did not speak the truth. And now I will say that I do not respect thee. No matter how high thee may climb, still I shall not respect thee; for thee will ever gain ends by flattery, by subtlety, and by using every man and every woman for selfish ends. Thee cannot be true-not even to that which by nature is greatest in thee.”. He withered under her words. “And what is greatest in me?” he asked abruptly, his coolness and self-possession striving to hold their own. “That which will ruin thee in the end.” Her eyes looked beyond his into the distance, rapt and shining; she seemed scarcely aware of his presence. “That which will bring thee down--thy hungry spirit of discovery. It will serve thee no better than it served the late Earl. But thee it will lead into paths ending in a gulf of darkness.” “Deborah!” he answered, with a rasping laugh. “Continuez! Forewarned is forearmed.”