stion me--don't press me. I could not--I _could_ not do what
you ask.'

'I yield, Maud--I yield, my dear. I will _not_ press you; you shall have
time, your _own_ time, to think. I will accept no answer now--no, _none_,
Maud.'

He said this, raising his thin hand to silence me.

'There, Maud, enough. I have spoken, as I always do to you, frankly,
perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak out, and plead, even
with the most obdurate and cruel.'

With these words Uncle Silas entered his bed-chamber, and shut the door,
not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought I heard a cry.

I hastened to my own room. I threw myself on my knees, and thanked Heaven
for the firmness vouchsafed me; I could not believe it to have been my own.

I was more miserable in consequence of this renewed suit on behalf of
my odious cousin than I can describe. My uncle had taken such a line of
importunity that it became a sort of agony to resist. I thought of the
possibility of my hearing of his having made away with himself, and was
every morning relieved when I heard that he was still as usual. I have
often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my
uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point
of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over
precipices through sheer dread of falling.

CHAPTER LI

_SARAH MATILDA COMES TO LIGHT_

Some time after this interview, one day as I sat, sad enough, in my room,
looking listlessly from the window, with good Mary Quince, whom, whether
in the house or in my melancholy rambles, I always had by my side, I
was startled by the sound of a loud and shrill female voice, in violent
hysterical action, gabbling with great rapidity, sobbing, and very nearly
screaming in a sort of fury.

I started up, staring at the door.

'Lord bless us!' cried honest Mary Quince, with round eyes and mouth agape,
staring in the same direction.

'Mary--Mary, what can it be?'

'Are they beating some one down yonder? I don't know where it comes from,'
gasped Quince.

'I will--I will--I'll see her. It's her I want.
Oo--hoo--hoo--hoo--oo--o--Miss Maud Ruthyn of Knowl. Miss Ruthyn of Knowl.
Hoo--hoo--hoo--hoo--oo!'

'What on earth can it be?' I exclaimed, in great bewilderment and terror.

It was now plainly very near indeed, and I heard the voice of our mild and
shaky butler evidently remonstrating with the distressed dam