with me?'

'I do not.'

'Do you pretend to be as able to judge as I?'

'In this instance, better.'

'Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You may depend upon it,
the world is not wrong when it forbids young ladies to have cognizance
of women leading disorderly lives.'

'Only the women, Mr. Sowerby?'

'Men, too, of course.'

'You do not exclude the men from Society.'

'Oh! one reads that kind of argument in books.'

'Oh! the worthy books, then. I would read them, if I could find them.'

'They are banned by self-respecting readers.'

'It grieves me to think differently.'

Dudley looked on this fair girl, as yet innocent girl; and contrasting
her with the foulness of the subject she dared discuss, it seemed
to him, that a world which did not puff at her and silence, if not
extinguish, was in a state of liquefaction.

Remembering his renewed repentances his absence, he said: 'I do hope
you may come to see, that the views shared by your mother and me are not
erroneous.'

'But do not distress her,' Nesta implored him. 'She is not well. When
she has grown stronger, her kind heart will move her to receive the
lady, so that she may not be deprived of the society of good women. I
shall hope she will not disapprove of me. I cannot forsake a friend.'

'I beg to say good-bye,' said Dudley.

She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startling
was it, that she might have fancied it expected, save for her knowing
herself too serious to have played at wiles to gain her ends.

He 'wished her prudent advisers.'

She thanked him. 'In a few days, Louise de Seilles will be here.'

A Frenchwoman and Papist! was the interjection of his twist of brows.

Surely I must now be free? she thought when he had covered his farewell
under a salutation regretful in frostiness.

A week later, she had the embrace of her Louise, and Armandine was made
happy with a piece of Parisian riband.

Winter was rapidly in passage: changes were visible everywhere; Earth
and House of Commons and the South London borough exhibited them; Mrs.
Burman was the sole exception. To the stupefaction of physicians, in a
manner to make a sane man ask whether she was not being retained as an
instrument for one of the darker purposes of Providence--and where are
we standing if we ask such things?--she held on to her thread of life.

February went by. And not a word from Themison; nor from Carling, nor
from the Rev. Groseman