human
If I have taken a liberty in giving an order under your roof and to your servant, I beg your pardon. But this is no time to stop at trifles or considerations of mere etiquette involving no real breach of good breeding. So long as your daughter is a minor I shall hold myself responsible for the trust her dead father confided to me conjointly with yourself; and, so help me God, I will perform the sacred duty to its utmost limits and regardless of human respect! There is foul play going on around us, and some influence--I know not yet whose--is at work to undermine the happiness of us all. There is bitter need that no fatal misunderstanding should arise between my ward and myself; that no subtle representations of interested persons should shake the reliance upon my integrity and honor, which hitherto Ada has placed in her father's friend. A life more precious to her than her own, and {460} dear to me as a brother's, is at stake; and I foresee, though dimly and darkly, that it imports far more than perhaps we dream of now to keep everything clear between us in our several relations with each other. At any rate I will allow no foolish fancies, no weak pride, to stand between your daughter and myself, her legal guardian and _sole trustee_.