And how that Lady Kate, as a fearful judgment on her for marrying a captain of artillery against the wishes of her noble relatives, was now expiating her crimes on 400L.

a-year, and when she might have married a duke.
Lady Kate was Miss Thornton's "awful example," her "naughty girl." She served to point many a moral of the old lady's.

But Lady Fanny, her sister, was always represented as the pattern of all Christian virtues who had crowned the hopes of her family and well-wishers by marrying a gouty marquis of sixty-three, with fifty thousand a-year.

On this occasion, Mary struck the old lady dumb--"knocked her cold," our American cousins would say--by announcing that she considered Lady Emily to be a fool, but that Lady Kate seemed to be a girl of some spirit.

So Miss Thornton left her to her own evil thoughts, and, as evening began to fall, Mary put on her bonnet, and went out for a walk.
Out by the back door, and round through the shrubbery, so that she gained the front gate unperceived from the windows; but ere she reached it she heard the latch go, and found herself face to face with a man.
He was an immensely tall man, six foot at least.