y as
stamping her conduct with approval of people of their worth and weight,
but as affording him some slight glimmering of hope. She could not but
recollect that the extra recklessness of language which had pained her,
ever since his rejection had diminished ever since her report of Sir
John's notice of her at the justice room. Sister-like, she pitied and
hoped; but the more immediate care extinguished all the rest, and she was
longing for Miss Fennimore's sympathy, though grieving at the pain the
disclosure must inflict. It could not be made till the girls were gone
to bed, and at half-past nine, Phoebe sought the schoolroom, and told her
tale. There was no answer, but an almost convulsive shudder; her hand
was seized, and her finger guided to the line which Miss Fennimore had
been reading in the Greek Testament--'By their fruits ye shall know
them.'

Rallying before Phoebe could trace what was passing in her mind, she shut
the book, turned her chair to the fire, invited Phoebe to another, and
was at once the clear-headed, metaphysical governess, ready to discuss
this grievous marvel. She was too generous by nature not to have treated
her pupils with implicit trust, and this trust had been abused. Looking
back, she and Phoebe could recollect moments when Bertha had been
unaccounted for, and must have held interviews with Mr. Hastings. She
had professed a turn for twilight walks in the garden, and remained out
of doors when the autumn evenings had sent the others in, and on the
Sunday afternoons, when Phoebe and Maria had been at church, Miss
Fennimore reproached herself exceedingly with having been too much
absorbed in her own readings to concern herself about the proceedings of
a pupil, whose time on that day was at her own disposal. She also
thought that there had been communications by look and sign across the
pew at church; and she had remarked, though Phoebe had been too much
occupied with her brother to perceive the restlessness that had settled
on Bertha from the time of the departure of Mervyn's guests, and had once
reproved her for lingering, as she thought, to gossip with Jane Hart in
her bedroom. 'And now,' said Miss Fennimore, 'she should have a thorough
change. Send her to school, calling it punishment, if you please, but
chiefly for the sake of placing her among laughing girlish girls of the
same age, and, above all, under a thoroughly religious mistress of wide
intelligence, and who has never