every post might bring down orders from
government which would make any such design impracticable.

Miss Walladmor, on her part, found that it would be impossible to
pursue this design without the co-operation of her own maid; and for
that purpose it was necessary to admit this young person in some degree
to her confidence. To any woman of delicate and deep feelings this must
naturally have been under ordinary circumstances a painful necessity;
but the time was now past for scruples of that sort: and difficulties,
which would have appeared insuperable in a situation of free choice,
melted away before the extremities of the present case. Moreover, apart
from the pain of making such disclosures at all, there was no person to
whom Miss Walladmor would more willingly have made them than to her own
attendant; for Grace Evans was an amiable girl: had been bred up in
superstitious reverence for the whole house of Walladmor; and with
regard to Miss Walladmor in particular, who had been the benefactress
of her own family in all its members, her attachment was so unlimited
that she would have regarded nothing as wrong which her young mistress
thought right--nor have suffered any obstacles whatsoever to deter her
in the execution of that thing which she had once understood to be her
mistress's pleasure. In the present case however there was nothing that
could press heavily on her sense of duty; nor any need to appeal to her
affections against her natural sense of propriety. On the contrary both
were in perfect harmony. She had long known, in common with all the
country, the circumstances of Miss Walladmor's early meetings with
Edward Nicholas--and the attachment which had grown out of them. And it
is observable that to all women endowed with much depth and purity of
feeling, more particularly to women in humble life who inherit a sort
of superstition on that subject (and are besides less liable to have it
shaken by the vulgar ridicule of the world, and the half-sneering tone
with which all deep feelings are treated in the more refined classes of
society)--love, but especially unfortunate love, is regarded with a
sanctity of interest and pity such as they give to religion or to the
memory of the dead. In this point women of the lowest rank (as a body)
are much more worthy of respect and admiration than those above them,
in proportion to the rarity of the temptations which beset them for
diverting the natural course of their own aff