w her upon Dudley's generosity, as being the shield for
an outcast. Girls, who see at a time of need their ideal extinguished in
its appearing tarnished, are very much at the disposal of the pressing
suitor. Nesta rose in the black winter morn, summoning the best she
could think of to glorify Dudley, that she might not feel so doomed.

According to an agreement overnight, she went to the bedroom of Dorothea
and Virginia, to assure them of her having slept well, and say the
good-bye to them and their Tasso. The little dog was the growl of a
silken ball in a basket. His mistresses excused him, because of his
being unused to the appearance of any person save Manton in their
bedroom. Dorothea, kissing her, said: 'Adieu, dear child; and there is
home with us always, remember. And, after breakfast, however it may
be, you will, for our greater feeling of security, have--she has our
orders--Manton--your own maid we consider too young for a guardian--to
accompany you. We will not have it on our consciences, that by any
possibility harm came to you while you were under our charge. The good
innocent girl we received from the hands of your father, we return to
him; we are sure of that.'

Nesta said: 'Mr. Sowerby promised he would come.'

'However it may be,' Dorothea repeated her curtaining phrase.

Virginia put in a word of apology for Tasso's temper he enjoyed
ordinarily a slumber of half an hour's longer duration. He was, Dorothea
feelingly added, regularity itself. Virginia murmured: 'Except once!'
and both were appalled by the recollection of that night. It had,
nevertheless, caused them to reperuse the Rev. Stuart Rem's published
beautiful sermon ON DIRT; the words of which were an antidote to the
night of Tasso in the nostrils of Mnemosyne; so that Dorothea could
reply to her sister, slightly by way of a reproval, quoting Mr. Stuart
Rem at his loftiest: '"Let us not bring into the sacred precincts
Dirt from the roads, but have a care to spread it where it is a
fructification."' Virginia produced the sequent sentence, likewise
weighty. Nesta stood between the thin division of their beds, her right
hand given to one, her left to the other. They had the semblance of a
haven out of storms.

She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that the residing
with them had been a means of casting her--it was an effort to remember
how--upon the world where the tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten;
and she might be the wo