mpany us. I wonder if
you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith. It is what men
always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret
themselves, and say, "Nothing is safe with these women."

Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their
ESPRIT DE CORPS, I do not know which to call it; for though they
looked on at Isa's manoeuvres and my blindness with indignant
contempt, they never attempted to interfere. Jane Druce was seized
with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father
withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably
find out the girl's true disposition, and that it would be wrong to
deprive Isa of a chance of coming under a fresh influence.

Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant
wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really,
as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but
the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was
very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice. I see now that it
has been her effort to keep the others away from me. This spiteful
trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on
Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival. Avice always
yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any
such opportunity.

When I talked to Mary, she said, "Oh yes, I always knew she was a
horrid little treacherous puss. Nature began it, and that governess
worked on a ready soil. We sent her to school, and hoped she was
cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be
more plausible. But what can one do? One could not turn out an
orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm.
I'm sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing
I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little
manoeuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will
do, I can't think, unless you and Edward will take her off our
hands. I believe you might do her good. She is an unfathomable
mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks
much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the
world" (fancy that). "Besides, she is really religious in a sort of
a way; much good you'll say it does her, but, as you know, there's a
certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people's
conduct."

It seems to be the general desire