xasperated. It would be unjust to deny that
she was greatly actuated by a sincere interest in her _ci-devant_
pupil's welfare; but other feelings were at work.

It is very remarkable how a perfectly well-principled woman will connive
at what she can not approve so long as she is taken unreservedly into
confidence; but when once one secret is kept back the danger of her
antagonism begins; the magic draught that has lulled the vigilant
Gryphon to sleep loses its potency; the guardian of the treasure
awakes--more savage because conscious of a dereliction in duty--and woe
to the Arimaspian! The cold, pale, chaste moon comes forth from behind
the cloud, determined to reveal every iota of transgression: no farther
chance of concealment here--_Reparat sua cornua Phoebe_.

So, to the utmost of her small powers, Bessie did endeavor to thwart and
counteract the adversary. Her line was consistently plaintive. In season
and out of season she whined and wept profusely. This was the last
resource of her simple strategy: when the enemy was getting too strong
to be met in open field, she adopted the Dutch plan of opening the
sluices and trying to drown him. It is painful to be obliged to state
that the inundation did not greatly avail. As she had done from the
first, Cecil declined to make any confidences, or indeed to discuss the
question at all.

Mr. Fullarton, too, felt keenly the defection of a promising proselyte.
Since that unfortunate afternoon Miss Tresilyan had been perfectly
civil, but always very cold; and he could not but be aware that he had
lost ground then that he never could hope to regain. The divine must
have been very desperate when he ventured to attack that impracticable
brother. It was not a judicious move; nor would any one have tried it
who knew Dick Tresilyan. It was not only that he liked and admired
Royston Keene, but he had a blind confidence in his sister that nothing
on earth could disturb: the evidence of his own senses would not have
affected it in the least. "Whatever _she_ does is right," he thought;
and he clung to that idea, as many other true believers will do to a
creed that they can not understand. So when the question was broached he
was not very angry (for he did _more_ than justice to the chaplain's
sense of duty), but he stubbornly declined to enter upon it at all. Mr.
Fullarton was so provoked that he was goaded into a taunt that he ought
to have been ashamed of.

"Perhaps you are right,"