'
'I am _very_ sorry,' exclaimed I, in all honesty.
'I know it, my dear niece, and appreciate your goodness; but there are
many reasons--none of them, I trust, ignoble--and which together render
it impossible. No. It would be misunderstood--my honour shall not be
impugned.'
'But, sir, that could not be; you have never proposed it. It would be all,
from first to last, _my_ doing.'
'True, dear Maud, but I know, alas! more of this evil and slanderous world
than your happy inexperience can do. Who will receive our testimony?
None--no, not one. The difficulty--the insuperable moral difficulty is
this--that I should expose myself to the plausible imputation of having
worked upon you, unduly, for this end; and more, that I could not hold
myself quite free from blame. It is your voluntary goodness, Maud. But you
are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between
you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. Some people may
call this Quixotic. In my mind it is an imperious mandate of conscience;
and I peremptorily refuse to disobey it, although within three weeks an
execution will be in this house!'
I did not quite know what an execution meant; but from two harrowing
novels, with whose distresses I was familiar, I knew that it indicated some
direful process of legal torture and spoliation.
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