"I should feel happier about you, if that question were well settled."
"Why, Mr. Digby?" said Rotha, answering rather something in his tone than in his words, and looking up to get the reply.
"Because, Rotha, you take hold hard, where you take hold at all; and you may take hold of something that will fail you."
Her eyes, and even a sudden change of colour, put a startled question to him. He smiled as he answered, though again with a reminder of pain which he did not stop to analyse. "No," he said, "I will never fail you, Rotha; never voluntarily; but I have no command over my own life. I would like you to have a trust that could never disappoint you; and there is only One on whom such a trust can be lodged. He who is resting on Christ, is resting on a rock."
"I know, Mr. Digby," said Rotha, in a subdued way. "I wish I was on such a rock, too; but that don't change anything."
"Do you think you really wish to be a Christian, Rotha?"
"Because mother was,—and because you are," she said gravely; "but then, for myself, I do not want it."
"What is likely to be the end?"
"That don't change anything, either," said Rotha, not too lucidly.
"Most true!" said Mr. Digby. "Well, Rotha, I will tell you what I think. I think you are your mother's child, and that you will not be left to your own wilfulness. I am afraid, though, that you may have to go through a bitter experience before the wilfulness is broken; and I want to give you one or two things to remember when it comes."