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.