"There should not have been a moment," he said, "before she came to me and told me all." Poor Lady Mary's position was certainly uncomfortable enough.

The great sin,--the sin which was so great that to have known it for a day without revealing it was in itself a damning sin on the part of Mrs.
Finn,--was Lady Mary's sin.

And she differed so entirely from her father as to think that this sin of her own was a virtue, and that to have spoken of it to him would have been, on the part of Mrs.Finn, a treachery so deep that no woman ought to have forgiven it! When he spoke of a matter which deeply affected his honour,--she could hardly refrain from asserting that his honour was quite safe in his daughter's hands.

And when in his heart he declared that it should have been Mrs.Finn's first care to save him from disgrace, Lady Mary did break out.

"Papa, there could be no disgrace." "That for a moment shall be laid aside," he said, with that manner by which even his peers in council had never been able not to be awed, "but if you communicate with Mrs.Finn at all you must make her understand that I regard her conduct as inexcusable." Nothing had been gained, and poor Lady Mary was compelled to write a few lines which were to her most painful in writing.
MY DEAR MRS.