But it has become due to me, due to all, to incur the risk of your ridicule even more than of your reproof, by stating to you thus candidly, plainly, bluntly, the sentiment which renders alarm so poignant, and which, if scarcely admissible to the romance of some wild dreamy boy, may seem an unpardonable folly in a man of my years and my sober calling,--due to me, to you, to Mrs.Ashleigh, because still the dearest thing in life to me is honour.

And if you, who know Mrs.
Ashleigh so intimately, who must be more or less aware of her plans or wishes for her daughter's future,--if you believe that those plans or wishes lead to a lot far more ambitious than an alliance with me could offer to Miss Ashleigh, then aid Mr.Vigors in excluding me from the house; aid me in suppressing a presumptuous, visionary passion.

I cannot enter that house without love and hope at my heart; and the threshold of that house I must not cross if such love and such hope would be a sin and a treachery in the eyes of its owner.

I might restore Miss Ashleigh to health; her gratitude might--I cannot continue.

This danger must not be to me nor to her, if her mother has views far above such a son-in-law.