ght. I told him that she had merely repeated,
like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that she knew no
particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I explained that
she had affected, out of crazy spite against him, to know what she
really did NOT know--that she only wanted to threaten him and aggravate
him for speaking to her as he had just spoken--and that my unlucky
words gave her just the chance of doing mischief of which she was in
search. I referred him to other queer ways of hers, and to his own
experience of the vagaries of half-witted people--it was all to no
purpose--he would not believe me on my oath--he was absolutely certain
I had betrayed the whole Secret. In short, he would hear of nothing
but shutting her up.

Under these circumstances, I did my duty as a mother. "No pauper
Asylum," I said, "I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A Private
Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a mother, and my
character to preserve in the town, and I will submit to nothing but a
Private Establishment, of the sort which my genteel neighbours would
choose for afflicted relatives of their own." Those were my words. It
is gratifying to me to reflect that I did my duty. Though never
overfond of my late daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No
pauper stain--thanks to my firmness and resolution--ever rested on MY
child.

Having carried my point (which I did the more easily, in consequence of
the facilities offered by private Asylums), I could not refuse to admit
that there were certain advantages gained by shutting her up. In the
first place, she was taken excellent care of--being treated (as I took
care to mention in the town) on the footing of a lady. In the second
place, she was kept away from Welmingham, where she might have set
people suspecting and inquiring, by repeating my own incautious words.

The only drawback of putting her under restraint was a very slight one.
We merely turned her empty boast about knowing the Secret into a fixed
delusion. Having first spoken in sheer crazy spitefulness against the
man who had offended her, she was cunning enough to see that she had
seriously frightened him, and sharp enough afterwards to discover that
HE was concerned in shutting her up. The consequence was she flamed
out into a perfect frenzy of passion against him, going to the Asylum,
and the first words she said to the nurses, after they had quieted her,
were, that she was