r. Neither will they to many of my
readers; while not a few will think they see all that is in them, and
see nothing.

He was silent for a long time--whether he waked or slept she could not
tell.

The annoyance was great in the home conclave when Mewks brought the
next piece of news--namely, that there was that designing Marston in
the master's room again, and however she got into the house he was sure
_he_ didn't know.

"All the same thing over again, miss!--hard at it a-tryin' to convert
'im!--And where's the use, you know, miss? If a man like my master's to
be converted and get off, I don't for my part see where's the good o'
keepin' up a devil."

"I am quite of your opinion, Mewks," said Sepia.

But in her heart she was ill at ease.

All day long she had been haunted with an ever-recurring temptation,
which, instead of dismissing it, she kept like a dog in a string.
Different kinds of evil affect people differently. Ten thousand will do
a dishonest thing, who would indignantly reject the dishonest thing
favored by another ten thousand. They are not sufficiently used to its
ugly face not to dislike it, though it may not be quite so ugly as
their _protege_. A man will feel grandly honest against the
dishonesties of another trade than his, and be eager to justify those
of his own. Here was Sepia, who did not care the dust of a butterfly's
wing for causing any amount of family misery, who would without a pang
have sacrificed the genuine reputation of an innocent man to save her
own false one--shuddering at an idea as yet bodiless in her brain--an
idea which, however, she did not dismiss, and so grew able to endure!

I have kept this woman--so far as personal acquaintance with her is
concerned--in the background of my history. For one thing, I am not
fond of _post-mortem_ examinations; in other words, I do not like
searching the decompositions of moral carrion. Analysis of such is,
like the use of reagents on dirt, at least unpleasant. Nor was any true
end to be furthered by a more vivid presentation of her. Nosology is a
science doomed, thank God, to perish! Health alone will at last fill
the earth. Or, if there should be always the ailing to help, a man will
help them by being sound himself, not by knowing the ins and outs of
disease. Diagnosis is not therapy.

Sepia was unnatural--as every one is unnatural who does not set his
face in the direction of the true Nature; but she had gone further in
the opposit