xiously, "you have never repented what you did about
Lord Ravenel?"

"No--not once. It cost me so much, that I know it was right to be
done."

"But if things had been otherwise--if you had not been so sure of
Maud's feelings--"

He started, painfully; then answered--"I think I should have done it
still."

I was silent. The paramount right, the high prerogative of love, which
he held as strongly as I did, seemed attacked in its liberty divine.
For the moment, it was as if he too had in his middle-age gone over to
the cold-blooded ranks of harsh parental prudence, despotic paternal
rule; as if Ursula March's lover and Maud's father were two distinct
beings. One finds it so, often enough, with men.

"John," I said, "could you have done it? could you have broken the
child's heart?"

"Yes, if it was to save her peace, perhaps her soul, I could have
broken my child's heart."

He spoke solemnly, with an accent of inexpressible pain, as if this
were not the first time by many that he had pondered over such a
possibility.

"I wish, Phineas, to make clear to you, in case of--of any future
misconceptions--my mind on this matter. One right alone I hold
superior to the right of love,--duty. It is a father's duty, at all
risks, at all costs, to save his child from anything which he believes
would peril her duty--so long as she is too young to understand fully
how beyond the claim of any human being, be it father or lover, is
God's claim to herself and her immortal soul. Anything which would
endanger that should be cut off--though it be the right hand--the right
eye. But, thank God, it was not thus with my little Maud."

"Nor with him either. He bore his disappointment well."

"Nobly. It may make a true nobleman of him yet. But, being what he
is, and for as long as he remains so, he must not be trusted with my
little Maud. I must take care of her while I live: afterwards--"

His smile faded, or rather was transmuted into that grave
thoughtfulness which I had lately noticed in him, when, as now, he fell
into one of his long silences. There was nothing sad about it; rather
a serenity which reminded me of that sweet look of his boyhood, which
had vanished during the manifold cares of his middle life. The
expression of the mouth, as I saw it in profile--close and calm--almost
inclined me to go back to the fanciful follies of our youth, and call
him "David."

We drove through Norton Bury, and left Mrs. Edwin t