To give such a promise had perhaps been wrong, but still without it I should have heard nothing of matters that concerned me nearly.

And now it seemed almost worse to keep than to break such a pledge, when I thought of a pious, pure-minded, and holy-hearted woman, like my dear "Aunt Mary," unwittingly brought into friendly contact with a man of the lowest nature.

And as for the Major, instead of sitting down with such a man to dinner, what would he have done but drive him straightway from the door, and chase him to the utmost verge of his manor with the peak end of his "geological hammer ?" However, away I went without a word against that contemptible and base man, toward whom--though he never had injured me--I cherished, for my poor cousin's sake, the implacable hatred of virtuous youth.

And a wild idea had occurred to me (as many wild ideas did now in the crowd of things gathering round me) that this strange woman, concealed from the world, yet keenly watching some members of it, might be that fallen and miserable creature who had fled from a good man with a bad one, because he was more like herself--Flittamore, Lady Castlewood.

Not that she could be an "old woman" yet, but she might look old, either by disguise, or through her own wickedness; and every body knows how suddenly those southern beauties fall off, alike in face and figure.