'Well, Maud, I am sure there is _no_ risk; but you are to suppose there is. Are you still willing to accept it?' Again I assented. 'You are worthy of your blood, Maud Ruthyn. It will come soon, and it won't last long. But you must not let people like Monica Knollys frighten you.' I was lost in wonder. 'If you allow them to possess you with their follies, you had better recede in time--they may make the ordeal as terrible as hell itself. You have zeal--have you nerve?' I thought in such a cause I had nerve for anything. 'Well, Maud, in the course of a few months--and it may be sooner--there must be a change. I have had a letter from London this morning that assures me of that. I must then leave you for a time; in my absence be faithful to the duties that will arise. To whom much is committed, of him will much be required. You shall promise me not to mention this conversation to Monica Knollys. If you are a talking girl, and cannot trust yourself, say so, and we will not ask her to come. Also, don't invite her to talk about your uncle Silas--I have reasons. Do you quite understand my conditions?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Your uncle Silas,' he said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones that sounded from so old a man almost terrible, 'lies under an intolerable slander. I don't correspond with him; I don't sympathise with him; I never quite did. He has grown religious, and that's well; but there are things in which even religion should not bring a man to acquiesce; and from what I can learn, he, the person primarily affected--the cause, though the innocent cause--of this great calamity--bears it with an easy apathy which is mistaken, and liable easily to be mistaken, and such as no Ruthyn, under the circumstances, ought to exhibit. I told him what he ought to do, and offered to open my purse for the purpose; but he would not, or _did_ not; indeed, he _never_ took my advice; he followed his own, and a foul and dismal shoal he has drifted on. It is not for his sake--why should I?-that I have longed and laboured to remove the disgraceful slur under which his ill-fortune has thrown us. He troubles himself little about it, I believe--he's meek, meeker than I. He cares less about his children than I about you, Maud; he is selfishly sunk in futurity--a feeble visionary. I am not so. I believe it to be a duty to take care of others beside myself. The character and influence of an ancient family is a peculiar heritage--sacred but destructible; and woe to him who either destroys or suffers it to perish!' This was the longest speech I ever heard my father speak before or after. He abruptly resumed-- 'Yes, we will, Maud--you and I--we'll leave one proof on record, which, fairly read, will go far to convince the world.' He looked round, but we were alone. The garden was nearly always solitary, and few visitors ever approached the house from that side.