This state of things had been discovered by Mrs.Milvain, her aunt Celia, a zealous inquirer into such matters, whose letter was also under consideration.

Cyril, she said, must be made to marry the woman at once; and Cyril, rightly or wrongly, was indignant with such interference with his affairs, and would not own that he had any cause to be ashamed of himself.

Had he any cause to be ashamed of himself, Katharine wondered; and she turned to her aunt again.
"Remember," she wrote, in her profuse, emphatic statement, "that he bears your grandfather's name, and so will the child that is to be born.

The poor boy is not so much to blame as the woman who deluded him, thinking him a gentleman, which he IS, and having money, which he has NOT." "What would Ralph Denham say to this ?" thought Katharine, beginning to pace up and down her bedroom.

She twitched aside the curtains, so that, on turning, she was faced by darkness, and looking out, could just distinguish the branches of a plane-tree and the yellow lights of some one else's windows.
"What would Mary Datchet and Ralph Denham say ?" she reflected, pausing by the window, which, as the night was warm, she raised, in order to feel the air upon her face, and to lose herself in the nothingness of night.