nder charm, more pathetic than her outcries were.

These had not always the sanction of polite usage: and her English was
guilty of sudden lapses to the Thameswater English of commerce and
drainage instead of the upper wells. But there are many uneducated ladies
in the land. Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature betray now
and then by peeps a similarity to Nesta's maid Mary's. Mrs. Marsett liked
love, blood, and adventure. She had, moreover, a favourite noble poet,
and she begged Nesta's pardon for naming him, and she would not name him,
and told her she must not read him until she was a married woman, because
he did mischief to girls. Thereupon she fell into one of her silences,
emerging with a cry of hate of herself for having ever read him. She did
not blame the bard. And, ah, poor bard! he fought his battle: he shall
not be named for the brand on the name. He has lit a sulphur match for
the lover of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad
frail souls who could accuse him of pipeing devil's agent to them at the
perilous instant--poor girls too!--is chastisement enough. This it is to
be the author of unholy sweets: a Posterity sitting in judgement will
grant, that they were part of his honest battle with the hypocrite
English Philistine, without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty
swallower of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness
of escape in never having met a man like him; followed by her regret that
'Ned' was so utterly unlike; except 'perhaps'--and she hummed; she was
off on the fraternity in wickedness.

Nesta's ears were fatigued. 'My mother writes of you,' she said, to vary
the subject.

Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: 'I have had my dream of a
friend!--It was that gentleman with you on the pier! Your mother
objects?'

'She has inquired, nothing more.'

'I am not twenty-three: not as old as I should be, for a guide to you. I
know I would never do you harm. That I know. I would walk into that water
first, and take Mrs. Worrell's plunge:--the last bath; a thorough
cleanser for a woman! Only, she was a good woman and didn't want it, as
we--as lots of us do:--to wash off all recollection of having met a man!
Your mother would not like me to call you Nesta! I have never begged you
to call me Judith. Damnable name!' Mrs. Marsett revelled in the heat of
the curse on it, as a relief to torture of the breast, until a sense of
the girl's alarme