To refuse would put him in a serious
difficulty; but I could perhaps come home sooner if it were not for
this other matter. I told him so far as that it was an object with
me to raise this sum in a few years, and he showed me how there is
every likelihood of my being able to do so out there. So now I feel
in your hands. If you all, and Edward chiefly, set to and persuade
my mother that this undertaking is a dangerous business, and that I
can only be led to it by inordinate love of riches--'
'No, no--'
'That's what she thinks,' pursued Clarence, 'and that I want to be a
grander man than my father. That's at the bottom of her mind, I
see. Well, if you deplore this, and let her think the place can't
do without me, she will come out in her strength and make it my duty
to stay at home.'
'It is very tempting,' said Emily.
'We all undertook to give up something.'
'We never thought it would come in this way!'
'We never do,' said Clarence.
'Tell me,' said Martyn, 'is this to content that ghost, poor thing?
For it is very hard to believe in her, except in the mullion room in
December.'
'Exactly so, Martyn,' he answered. 'Impressions fade, and the
intellect fails to accept them. But I do not think that is my
motive. We know that a wicked deed was done by our ancestor, and we
hardly have the right to pray, "Remember not the sins of our
forefathers," unless, now that we know the crime, we attempt what
restitution in us lies.
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