I am angry with you?"
she said.

"Oh, Miss Chatty!" The girl had no breath or courage to say more.

"You did right, I believe," Chatty said. "It would have been better if
you had come and told me quietly at home, before--anything had happened.
But I do not blame you. I think you did right."

"I never knew till the last minute that it would hurt you so!" Lizzie
cried. "I knew it might be bad for the gentleman, and that he could be
tried and put in prison; but she would never, never have done that. She
wanted him to be free. It was only when I knew, Miss Chatty, what it
would do to you--and then it was too late. I went to Highcombe, but you
had gone from there; and then when I got to London----"

A flush came over Chatty's face, as all the extraordinary scene came
back to her. "It seems strange that it should be you who were mixed up
with all," she said. "Things happen very strangely, I think, in life;
one can never tell--If you have no objection, I should like you to tell
me something of--. I saw her--do you remember? here, on this very road:
and you told me--ah! that to put such people in penitentiaries would not
do; that they wanted to enjoy themselves. Do you remember? It seemed
very strange to me then. And to think that----" This moved Chatty more
than all the rest had done. Her soft face grew crimson, her eyes filled
with tears.

"To think that she--oh, Miss Chatty, I feel as if I ought to go down on
my knees and ask you to forgive me for ever having anything to do with
her."

"That was no fault of yours, I think," said Chatty very softly. "It can
have been nobody's fault. It is just because--it has happened so: that
makes it harder and harder: none of us meant any harm--except
perhaps----"

"Miss Chatty, she didn't mean any harm to you. She meant no harm to any
one. She was never brought up to care for what was good. She was brought
up just to please her fancy. Oh, the like of you can't understand, if
you were to be told ever so: nor should I if I hadn't seen it. They make
a sort of principle of that, just to please their fancy. We're taught
here that to please ourselves is mostly wrong: but not there. It's their
religion in a kind of a way, out in these wild places, just to do whatever
they like; and then when you come to grief, if you are plucky and take
it cheerful---- The very words sound dreadful, here where everything is
so different," Lizzie said, with a shudder, looking round her, as if
there might