There was nothing tangible but this shrinking from the encounter of our eyes. I said he was kind as usual. He was even more so. But there was this new sign of our silently repellant natures. Dislike it could not be. He knew I longed to serve him. Was it shame? Was there not a shade of horror in it? 'I have not slept,' said he. 'For me the night has passed in thought, and the fruit of it is this--I _cannot_, Maud, accept your noble offer.' 'I am _very_ sorry,' exclaimed I, in all honesty. 'I know it, my dear niece, and appreciate your goodness; but there are many reasons--none of them, I trust, ignoble--and which together render it impossible. No. It would be misunderstood--my honour shall not be impugned.' 'But, sir, that could not be; you have never proposed it. It would be all, from first to last, _my_ doing.' 'True, dear Maud, but I know, alas! more of this evil and slanderous world than your happy inexperience can do. Who will receive our testimony? None--no, not one. The difficulty--the insuperable moral difficulty is this--that I should expose myself to the plausible imputation of having worked upon you, unduly, for this end; and more, that I could not hold myself quite free from blame. It is your voluntary goodness, Maud. But you are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. Some people may call this Quixotic. In my mind it is an imperious mandate of conscience; and I peremptorily refuse to disobey it, although within three weeks an execution will be in this house!' I did not quite know what an execution meant; but from two harrowing novels, with whose distresses I was familiar, I knew that it indicated some direful process of legal torture and spoliation. 'Oh, uncle I--oh, sir!--you cannot allow this to happen. What will people say of me? And--and there is poor Milly--and _everything_! Think what it will be.' 'It cannot be helped--_you_ cannot help it, Maud. Listen to me. There will be an execution here, I cannot say exactly how soon, but, I think, in a little more than a fortnight. I must provide for your comfort. You must leave. I have arranged that you shall join Milly, for the present, in France, till I have time to look about me. You had better, I think, write to your cousin, Lady Knollys. She, with all her oddities, has a heart. Can you say, Maud, that I have been kind?' 'You have never been anything but kind,' I exclaimed.