worst comes to the worst, I
know what to do! And I must write to him--not now--as soon as he's
well--he must come away. Even if it should turn out all a mistake, he
must come away!--I'll write to him, as soon as he's well, that he must
come away. And I'll question Cornelia again--ah! she's a handsome
girl!--it's well I got her up here, out of the way!--I'll find out more
from her. It may be a mistake, after all--it may, it may!"

While Aunt Margaret, sitting in her boudoir, thus took doubtful and
disconnected counsel with herself, Cornelia was left to manage her
little difficulties as best she might. Being tolerably quick in
observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to
intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere,
she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of
success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which
piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when
others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results
and drawing deductions, she presently began to understand a good deal
more than she had bargained for, was considerably shocked and disgusted,
and perhaps felt desirous to unlearn what she had learned.

But this was not so easy. Things she would willingly have forgotten
seemed, for that very reason, to stick in her memory--nay, in some moods
of mind, to appear less entirely objectionable than in others. She had
little opportunity for solitude--to bethink herself where she stood, and
how she came there. During the daytime, there were the young ladies,
here, there, and everywhere; there could be no seclusion. In the
afternoons and evenings some admiring, soft-voiced young gentleman was
always at her side, offering her his arm on the faintest pretext, or
attempting to put it round her waist on no pretext at all; who always
found it more convenient to murmur in her ear, than to speak out from a
reasonable distance; whose hands were always getting into proximity with
hers, and often attempting to clasp them; whose eyes were forever
expressing something earnest or arch, pleading or romantic--though
precisely what, his lingering utterance scarcely tried to define; who
never could "see the harm" of these and many other peculiarities of
behavior; and, indeed it was not very easy to argue about them, although
the young gentlemen never shrank from the dispute, and never failed to
have on hand an inexh