"

"And what became of her--the mindless animal, to forsake so good and
great a man! I do hope she was punished, and that vile man too."

"She was, Miss Castlewood; but he was not; at least he has not received
justice yet. But he will, he will, he will, miss. The treacherous thief!
And my lord received him as a young fellow-countryman under a cloud, and
lent him money, and saved him from starving; for he had broken with his
father and was running from his creditors."

"Tell me no more," I said; "not another word. It is my fate to meet
that--well, that gentleman--almost every day. And he, and he--oh, how
thankful I am to have found out all this about him!"

The above will show why, when I met my father's cousin on the following
morning--with his grand, calm face, as benevolent as if he had passed a
night of luxurious rest instead of sleepless agony--I knew myself to be
of a lower order in mind and soul and heart than his; a small, narrow,
passionate girl, in the presence of a large, broad-sighted, and
compassionate man.

I threw myself altogether on his will; for, when I trust, I trust
wholly. And, under his advice, I did not return with any rash haste to
Bruntsea, but wrote in discharge of all duty there; while Mrs. Price, a
clear and steadfast woman, was sent to London to see Wilhelmina Strouss.
These two must have had very great talks together, and, both being
zealous and faithful, they came to many misunderstandings. However, on
the whole, they became very honest friends, and sworn allies at last,
discovering more, the more they talked, people against whom they felt a
common and just enmity.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SHOXFORD

Are there people who have never, in the course of anxious life, felt
desire to be away, to fly away, from every thing, however good and dear
to them, and rest a little, and think new thought, or let new thought
flow into them, from the gentle air of some new place, where nobody has
heard of them--a place whose cares, being felt by proxy, almost seem
romantic, and where the eyes spare brain and heart with a critic's
self-complacence? If any such place yet remains, the happy soul may seek
it in an inland English village.

A village where no billows are to stun or to confound it, no crag or
precipice to trouble it with giddiness, and where no hurry of restless
tide makes time, its own father, uneasy. But in the quiet, at the bottom
of the valley, a beautiful rivulet, belonging to the place,