If she got into conversation with her father about the past he was certain to mention to her, in self-exculpation, how that her mother had haughtily, resentfully refused assistance from him; how that from the day that he left her she had not accepted a stiver from him. When Winefred learned this she would at once ask, whence then came the money that had enabled her mother to purchase the Undercliff, and to send her to be educated in a private family of some pretensions? And Winefred was not one to leave such a question unanswered. She would work at it till she had arrived at a satisfactory explanation. When the girl discovered that no money had been transmitted to her mother from Mr. Holwood, her mind would at once fasten on the rumours that circulated relative to what her mother had done. She could come to no other possible conclusion save that there was some good ground for the suspicion so generally entertained. That Winefred did resent such an appropriation of the savings of a dead man Jane could understand, but not why she did not accept those excuses for it with which Jane salved her own conscience. The fable about the murder of her brother at the instigation of Job Rattenbury, and that of her father having been defrauded of his legitimate gains by the same man, she had accepted as certain truths, and clung to them as such with tenacity. She had not that sharpness of vision in the matter of right and wrong, nor that fineness of texture of conscience that had Winefred. Like a vast number of other people, any pretext served as an excuse for the commission of a wrong; a colourable pretext was the cocaine with which moral sensation was benumbed. Various causes had combined to make Winefred high principled as she was. Unquestionably there was natural downrightness in her character from the outstart; this had been accentuated by her work in selecting and polishing stones for the lapidary. Too often had she been deceived by a pebble that promised well, and which only after laborious grinding and smoothing had revealed itself to be worthless. This had contributed to foster in her resentment against an exterior that did not correspond with what was within. She had been obliged to deal with shifty personages, and had seen through their evasions. Further, she had enjoyed that supreme advantage of having been taught in a dame's school where the two duties were made the basis of all instruction, and the mind was educated instead of being taught. But it was not trouble of mind concerning Winefred that alone allowed Jane Marley no rest. There was a something indescribable, sensible but inexplicable, that set all her nerves in a tingle, that impressed her with a feeling of insecurity.