As true as that every individual sin that a man commits breeds multitudes more, is it that every individual sin may transmit his own peculiar type of weakness or wickedness to a whole race, disappearing in one generation, re-appearing in another, exactly the same as physical peculiarities do, requiring the utmost caution of education to counteract the terrible tendencies of nature--the "something in the blood" which is so difficult to eradicate: which may even make the third and fourth generation execrate the memory of him or her who was its origin.
The long life-curse of Henry Leaf the elder, and Henry Leaf the younger, had been--the women of the family well knew--that they were men who "couldn't say No." So keenly were the three sisters alive to this fault--it could hardly be called a crime, and yet in its consequences it was so--so sickening the terror of it which their own wretched experience had implanted in their minds, that during Ascott's childhood and youth his very fractiousness and roughness, his little selfishness, and his persistence in his own will against theirs, had been hailed by his aunts as a good omen that he would grow up "so unlike his poor father." If the two unhappy Henry Leafs--father and son--could have come out of their graves that night and beheld these three women, daughters and sisters, sitting with Ascott's letter on the table, planning how the household's small expenses could be contracted, its still smaller luxuries relinquished, in order that the boy might honorably pay for pleasures he might so easily have done without! If they could have seen the weight of apprehension which then sank like a stone on these long-tried hearts, never to be afterward removed: lightened sometimes, but always--however Ascott might promise and amend--always there! On such a discovery, surely, these two "poor ghosts" would have fled away moaning, wishing they had died childless, or that during their mortal lives any amount of self restraint and self compulsion had purged from their natures the accursed thing; the sin which had worked itself out in sorrow upon every one belonging to them, years after their own heads were laid in the quiet dust.
"We must do it," was the conclusion the Misses Leaf unanimously came to; even Selina; who with all her faults, had a fair share of good feeling and of that close clinging to kindred which is found in fallen households, or households whom the sacred bond of common poverty, has drawn together in a way that large, well-to-do home circles can never quite understand.
"We must not let the boy remain in debt; it would be such a disgrace to the family." "It is not the remaining in debt, but the incurring of it, which is the real disgrace to Ascott and the family." "Hush Hilary," said Johanna, pointing to the opening door; but it was too late.
Elizabeth, coming suddenly in--or else the ladies had been so engrossed with their conversation that they had not noticed her--had evidently heard every word of the last sentence.

Her conscious face showed it; more especially the bright scarlet which covered both her cheeks when Miss Leaf said "Hush!" She stood, apparently irresolute as to whether she should run away again; and then her native honesty got the upper hand, and she advanced into the room.
"If you please, missis, I didn't mean to--but I've heard--" "What have you heard; that is, how much ?" "Just what Miss Hilary said.

Don't be afeared.

I shan't tell.

I never chatter about the family.