There was danger to the girl both in silence and in speech: if there was no ground for the apprehension, the very supposition was an injury--might even suggest the thing it was intended to frustrate! Still something must be risked! He had just been reading in sir Philip Sidney, that "whosoever in great things will think to prevent all objections, must lie still and do nothing." But what was he to do?
The readiest and simplest thing was to go to the youth, tell him what he had heard, and ask him if there was any ground for it.

But they must find the girl another situation! in either case distance must be put between them! He would tell her grandparents; but he feared, if there was any truth in it, they would have no great influence with her.

If on the other hand, the thing was groundless, they might make it up between her and her fisherman, and have them married! She might only have been teasing him!--He would certainly speak to the young lord! Yet again, what if he should actually put the mischief into his thoughts! If there should be ever so slight a leaning in the direction, might he not so give a sudden and fatal impulse?
He would take the housekeeper into his counsel! She must understand the girl! Things would at once show themselves to her on the one side or the other, which might reveal the path he ought to take.

But did he know mistress Brookes well enough?
Would she be prudent, or spoil everything by precipitation?
She might ruin the girl if she acted without sympathy, caring only to get the appearance of evil out of the house! The way the legally righteous act the policeman in the moral world would be amusing were it not so sad.

They are always making the evil "move on," driving it to do its mischiefs to other people instead of them; dispersing nests of the degraded to crowd them the more, and with worse results, in other parts: why should such be shocked at the idea of sending out of the world those to whom they will not give a place in it to lay their heads?
They treat them in this world as, according to the old theology, their God treats them in the next, keeping them alive for sin and suffering.
Some with the bright lamp of their intellect, others with the smoky lamp of their life, cast a shadow of God on the wall of the universe, and then believe or disbelieve in the shadow.
Donal was still in meditation when he reached home, and still undecided what he should do.