self so as to merit reproach? I don't know that I was
ever ten minutes in his company that you were not there also."

"It was the last accusation I should have brought against you,"
whimpered Miss Baker.

"Then why has she treated me in this way? What right have I given her
to be my advisor, because I go to her husband's church? Mr Maguire
is my friend, and it might have come to that, that he should be my
husband. Is there any sin in that, that I should be rebuked?"

"It was for the other lady's sake, perhaps."

"Then let her go to the other lady, or to him. She has forgotten
herself in coming to me, and she shall know that I think so."

Miss Baker, when she left the Paragon, felt for Miss Mackenzie more
of respect and more of esteem also than she had ever felt before. But
Miss Mackenzie, when she was left alone, went upstairs, threw herself
on her bed, and was again dissolved in tears.

CHAPTER XIII

Mr Maguire's Courtship

After the scene between Miss Mackenzie and Miss Baker more than
a week passed by before Miss Mackenzie saw any of her Littlebath
friends; or, as she called them with much sadness when speaking of
them to herself, her Littlebath acquaintances. Friends, or friend,
she had none. It was a slow, heavy week with her, and it is hardly
too much to say that every hour in it was spent in thinking of the
attack which Mrs Stumfold had made upon her. When the first Sunday
came, she went to church, and saw there Miss Baker, and Mrs Stumfold,
and Mr Stumfold and Mr Maguire. She saw, indeed, many Stumfoldians,
but it seemed that their eyes looked at her harshly, and she was
quite sure that the coachmaker's wife treated her with marked
incivility as they left the porch together. Miss Baker had frequently
waited for her on Sunday mornings, and walked the length of two
streets with her; but she encountered no Miss Baker near the church
gate on this morning, and she was sure that Mrs Stumfold had
prevailed against her. If it was to be thus with her, had she not
better leave Littlebath as soon as possible? In the same solitude she
lived the whole of the next week; with the same feelings did she go
to church on the next Sunday; and then again was she maltreated by
the upturned nose and half-averted eyes of the coachmaker's wife.

Life such as this would be impossible to her. Let any of my readers
think of it, and then tell themselves whether it could be possible.
Mariana's solitude in the moated grange