of Mrs. So-and-so's indiscretion while still Miss
Such-and-such must be talked of more guardedly.

And all the while behold the subjects of these stories, in whom, but
for this sudden revelation of a shady past, you can detect no moral
difference from your amiable and respectable self! They puzzle you, as
they puzzle us, with a doubt whether they really are the same people;
whether they have not changed their identity since the days of their
delinquency. If they really are the same, it almost throws a doubt on
how far the permanent unforgiveness of sins is expedient. We of
course refer to Human Expediency only--the construction of a working
hypothesis of Life, that would favour peace on earth and good-will
towards men; that would establish a _modus vivendi_, and enable us to
be jolly with these reprobates--at any rate, as soon as they had
served their time and picked their oakum. We are not intruding on the
province of the Theologian--merely discussing the problem of how we
can make ourselves pleasant to one another all round, until that final
separation of the sheep from the goats, when, however carefully they
may have patched up their own little quarrels, they will have to bid
each other farewell reluctantly, and make up their minds to the
permanent endurance of Heaven and Hell respectively.

We confess that we ourselves think there ought to be a Statute of
Limitations, and that after a certain lapse of time any offence,
however bad, against morality might be held not to have been
committed. If we feel this about culprits who tempted us, at the time
of their enormity, to put in every honest hand a whip to lash the
rascal naked the length of a couple of lamp-posts, how much more when
the offence has been one which our own sense of moral law (a perverted
one, we admit) scarcely recognises as any offence at all. And how much
more yet, when we find it hard to believe that they--actually _they
themselves_, that we know now--can have done the things imputed to
them. If the stories are really true, were they not possessed by evil
spirits? Or have they since come to be possessed by better ones than
their normal stock-in-trade?

What is all this prosy speculation about? Well, it's about our friend
in the last chapter, Sally's mother. At least, it is suggested by her.
She is one of those perplexing cases we have hinted at, and we
acknowledge ourselves unable to account for her at the date of the
story, knowing what we do of