d risen. 'I ought not to have
let her come. I invited her--for once: I am lonely. None of my sex--none
I could respect! I meant it for only once. She promised to sing to me.
And, Oh! how she sings! You have heard her. My whole heart came out. I
declare I believe girls exist who can hear our way of life--and I'm not
so bad except compared with that angel, who heard me, and was and is, I
could take oath, no worse for it. Some girls can; she is one. I am all
for bringing them up in complete innocence. If I was a great lady,
my daughters should never know anything of the world until they were
married. But Miss Radnor is a young lady who cannot be hurt. She is
above us. Oh! what a treasure for a man!--and my God! for any man born
of woman to insult a saint, as she is!--He is a beast!'

'Major Worrell met her here?'

'Blame me as much as you like: I do myself. Half my rage with him is at
myself for putting her in the way of such a beast to annoy. Each time
she came, I said it was to be the last. I let her see what a mercy from
heaven she was to me. She would come. It has not been many times. She
wishes me either to... Captain Marsett has promised. And nothing seems
hard--to me when my own God's angel is by. She is! I'm not such a
bad woman, but I never before I knew her knew the meaning of the word
virtue. There is the young lady that man worried with his insulting
remarks! though he must have known she was a lady:--because he found her
in my rooms.'

'You were present when, as you say, he insulted her?'

'I was. Here it commenced; and he would see her downstairs.'

'You heard?'

'Of course, I never left her.'

'Give me a notion...'

'To get her to make an appointment: to let him conduct her home.'

'She was alone?'

'Her maid was below.'

'And this happened...?'

'Yesterday, after dark. My Ned--Captain Marsett encourages him to be
familiar. I should be the lowest of women if I feared the threats of
such a reptile of a man. I could tell you more. I can't always refuse
his visits, though if Ned knew the cur he is! Captain Marsett is
easy-going.'

'I should like to know where he lives.'

She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about with a card,
handing it, quite aware that it was a charge of powder.

Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said; and especially
they seemed a cover to the bald and often spotty language leaping out of
her, against her better taste, when her temper was up.