What female fails to feel such interest in the helpless creature she has tended?
And to sum the whole up, the dame had a share of human vanity; and being a sort of Lady Bountiful in her way (for the character was not then confined to the old and the foolish), she was proud of the skill by which she had averted the probable attacks of hereditary malady, so inveterate in the family of Bridgenorth.

It needed not, perhaps, in other cases, that so many reasons should be assigned for an act of neighbourly humanity; but civil war had so lately torn the country asunder, and broken all the usual ties of vicinage and good neighbourhood, that it was unusual to see them preserved among persons of different political opinions.
Major Bridgenorth himself felt this; and while the tear of joy in his eye showed how gladly he would accept Lady Peveril's proposal, he could not help stating the obvious inconveniences attendant upon her scheme, though it was in the tone of one who would gladly hear them overruled.
"Madam," he said, "your kindness makes me the happiest and most thankful of men; but can it be consistent with your own convenience?
Sir Geoffrey has his opinions on many points, which have differed, and probably do still differ, from mine.

He is high-born, and I of middling parentage only.

He uses the Church Service, and I the Catechism of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster----" "I hope you will find prescribed in neither of them," said the Lady Peveril, "that I may not be a mother to your motherless child.

I trust, Master Bridgenorth, the joyful Restoration of his Majesty, a work wrought by the direct hand of Providence, may be the means of closing and healing all civil and religious dissensions among us, and that, instead of showing the superior purity of our faith, by persecuting those who think otherwise from ourselves on doctrinal points, we shall endeavour to show its real Christian tendency, by emulating each other in actions of good-will towards man, as the best way of showing our love to God." "Your ladyship speaks what your own kind heart dictates," answered Bridgenorth, who had his own share of the narrow-mindedness of the time; "and sure am I, that if all who call themselves loyalists and Cavaliers, thought like you--and like my friend Sir Geoffrey"-- (this he added after a moment's pause, being perhaps rather complimentary than sincere)--"we, who thought it our duty in time past to take arms for freedom of conscience, and against arbitrary power, might now sit down in peace and contentment.