et one.'

'Shall you sleep?' said Phoebe, wistfully lingering.

'Yes; I don't enter into it enough to be haunted. Ah! you have never
learnt what it is to feel heavy with trouble. I believe I shall not
dwell on it till I know more. There may be much excuse; she may have
been artful, and at least Owen dealt fairly by her in one respect. I can
better suppose her unworthy than him cruelly neglectful.'

In that hope Honor slept, and was not more depressed than Phoebe had seen
her under Lucilla's desertion. She put off herjudgment till she should
hear more, went about her usual occupations, and sent Phoebe home till
letters should come, when they would meet again.

Both heard from Robert by the next post, and his letter to Miss
Charlecote related all that he had been able to collect from Mrs.
Murrell, or from Owen himself. The narrative is here given more fully
than he was able to make it. Edna Murrell, born with the susceptible
organization of a musical temperament, had in her earliest childhood been
so treated as to foster refined tastes and aspirations, such as disgusted
her with the respectable vulgarity of her home. The pet of the nursery
and school-room looked down on the lodge kitchen and parlour, and her
discontent was a matter of vanity with her parents, as a sign of her
superiority, while plausibility and caution were continually enjoined on
her rather by example than by precept, and she was often aware of her
mother's indulgence of erratic propensities in religion, unknown either
to her father or his employers.

Unexceptionable as had been her training-school education, the high
cultivation and soundness of doctrine had so acted on her as to keep her
farther aloof from her mother, whose far more heartfelt religion appeared
to her both distasteful and contemptible, and whose advice was thus cast
aside as prejudiced and sectarian.

Such was the preparation for the unprotected life of a schoolmistress in
a house by herself. Servants and small tradesfolk were no companions to
her, and were offended by her ladylike demeanour; and her refuge was in
books that served but to increase the perils of sham romance, and in
enthusiastic adoration of the young lady, whose manners apparently placed
her on an equality, although her beauty and musical talents were in truth
only serving as a toy.

Her face and voice had already been thrust on Owen's notice before the
adventure with the bargeman had constituted the you