And Mervyn saw all this and pondered on it, and went away soon; the iron entered into his soul.
Aunt Rebecca was so occupied with her dogs, squirrels, parrots, old women, and convicts, that her eyes being off the cards, she saw little of the game; and when a friendly whisper turned her thoughts that way, and it flashed upon her that tricks and honours were pretty far gone, she never remembered that she had herself to blame for the matter, but turned upon her poor niece with 'Sly creature!' and so forth.

And while owing to this inattention, Gertrude had lost the benefit of her sage Aunt Rebecca's counsels altogether, her venerable but frisky old grandmother--Madam Nature--it was to be feared, might have profited by the occasion to giggle and whistle her own advice in her ear, and been indifferently well obeyed.

I really don't pretend to say--maybe there was nothing, or next to nothing in it; or if there was, Miss Gertrude herself might not quite know.

And if she did suspect she liked him, ever so little, she had no one but Lilias Walsingham to tell; and I don't know that young ladies are always quite candid upon these points.

Some, at least, I believe, don't make confidences until their secrets become insupportable.