ould understand, to you. Remember, I saw him at
the last with the pencil in his failing hand, trying to write some word
for you to read, but to which he could give no shape. The more
remote and cruel this vague suspicion that I have, the stronger the
circumstances that could give it any semblance of probability to me.
For Heaven's sake, let us examine sacredly whether there is any wrong
entrusted to us to set right. No one can help towards it, mother, but
you.'

Still so recoiling in her chair that her overpoised weight moved it,
from time to time, a little on its wheels, and gave her the appearance
of a phantom of fierce aspect gliding away from him, she interposed her
left arm, bent at the elbow with the back of her hand towards her face,
between herself and him, and looked at him in a fixed silence.

'In grasping at money and in driving hard bargains--I have begun, and I
must speak of such things now, mother--some one may have been grievously
deceived, injured, ruined. You were the moving power of all this
machinery before my birth; your stronger spirit has been infused into
all my father's dealings for more than two score years. You can set
these doubts at rest, I think, if you will really help me to discover
the truth. Will you, mother?'

He stopped in the hope that she would speak. But her grey hair was not
more immovable in its two folds, than were her firm lips.

'If reparation can be made to any one, if restitution can be made to any
one, let us know it and make it. Nay, mother, if within my means, let ME
make it. I have seen so little happiness come of money; it has brought
within my knowledge so little peace to this house, or to any one
belonging to it, that it is worth less to me than to another. It can buy
me nothing that will not be a reproach and misery to me, if I am haunted
by a suspicion that it darkened my father's last hours with remorse, and
that it is not honestly and justly mine.' There was a bell-rope hanging
on the panelled wall, some two or three yards from the cabinet. By a
swift and sudden action of her foot, she drove her wheeled chair rapidly
back to it and pulled it violently--still holding her arm up in its
shield-like posture, as if he were striking at her, and she warding off
the blow.

A girl came hurrying in, frightened.

'Send Flintwinch here!'

In a moment the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the
door. 'What! You're hammer and tongs, already, you two?' he sai