It was a struggle, then; a proud, wild resolve against
constitutional cowardice.
Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength
seemed framed to bear--the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and
self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve--will understand the
kind of agony which I sometimes endured.
But, again, consolation would come, and it seemed to me that I must be
exaggerating my risk in the coming crisis; and certain at least, if my
father believed it attended with real peril, he would never have wished
to see me involved in it. But the silence under which I was bound was
terrifying--double so when the danger was so shapeless and undivulged.
I was soon to understand it all--soon, too, to know all about my father's
impending journey, whither, with what visitor, and why guarded from me with
so awful a mystery.
That day there came a lively and goodnatured letter from Lady Knollys. She
was to arrive at Knowl in two or three days' time. I thought my father
would have been pleased, but he seemed apathetic and dejected.
'One does not always feel quite equal to Monica.
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