The Quaker looked him hard in the face. "In the ordinary needs of life, my young lord, the maxim is a good one."
"It is good for everything. You tell me of the Almighty. Will the Almighty give me the girl I love if I sit still and hold my peace? Must I not work for that as for anything else?"
"What can I do, Lord Hampstead?"
"Agree with me that it will be better for her to run her chance. Say as I do that it cannot be right that she should condemn herself. If you,—you her father,—will bid her, then she will do it."
"I do not know."
"You can try with her;—if you think it right. You are her father."
"Yes,—I am her father."
"And she is obedient to you. You do not think that she should—? Eh?"
"How am I to say? What am I to say else than that it is in God's hands? I am an old man who have suffered much. All have been taken from me;—all but she. How can I think of thy trouble when my own is so heavy?"
"It is of her that we should think."