"I do believe," she pursued in the same spirit, "in a certain amount of intelligent confidence.

Really nice men are steadied by the sense of your having had it.

But I wouldn't," she added gaily, "trust him all round!" IV Many things at Mertle were strange for her interlocutor, but nothing perhaps as yet had been so strange as the sight of this arrangement for little Aggie's protection; an arrangement made in the interest of her remaining as a young person of her age and her monde--so her aunt would have put it--should remain.

The strangest part of the impression too was that the provision might really have its happy side and his lordship understand definitely better than any one else his noble friend's whole theory of perils and precautions.

The child herself, the spectator of the incident was sure enough, understood nothing; but the understandings that surrounded her, filling all the air, made it a heavier compound to breathe than any Mr.Longdon had yet tasted.