s inconsistency, and said,

"You see by my countenance that all is well, and therefore you smile on
me before I tell you what has passed."

This brought her to the recollection of her conduct, and now with looks
ill constrained, she attempted the expression of an alarm she did not
feel.

"Nay, I assure you Lord Frederick is safe," he resumed, "and the
disgrace of his blow washed entirely away, by a few drops of blood from
this arm." And he laid his hand upon his left arm, which rested in his
waistcoat as a kind of sling.

She cast her eyes there, and seeing where the ball had entered the coat
sleeve, she gave an involuntary scream, and sunk upon the sofa. Instead
of that affectionate sympathy which Miss Woodley used to exert upon her
slightest illness or affliction, she now addressed her in an unpitying
tone, and said, "Miss Milner, you have heard Lord Frederick is safe, you
have therefore nothing to alarm you." Nor did she run to hold a smelling
bottle, or to raise her head. Her guardian seeing her near fainting, and
without any assistance from her friend, was going himself to give it;
but on this, Miss Woodley interfered, and having taken her head upon her
arm, assured him, "It was a weakness to which Miss Milner was
accustomed: that she would ring for her maid, who knew how to relieve
her instantly with a few drops." Satisfied with this, Dorriforth left
the room; and a surgeon being come to examine his wound, he retired into
his own chamber.

CHAPTER XVI.

The power delegated by the confidential to those entrusted with their
secrets, Miss Woodley was the last person on earth to abuse--but she was
also the last, who, by an accommodating complacency, would participate
in the guilt of her friend--and there was no guilt, except that of
murder, which she thought equal to the crime in question, if it was ever
perpetrated. Adultery, reason would perhaps have informed her, was a
more pernicious evil to society; but to a religious mind, what sound is
so horrible as _sacrilege?_ Of vows made to God or to man, the former
must weigh the heaviest. Moreover, the sin of infidelity in the married
state, is not a little softened to common understandings, by its
frequency; whereas, of religious vows broken by a devotee she had never
heard; unless where the offence had been followed by such examples of
divine vengeance, such miraculous punishments in this world, (as well as
eternal punishment in the other) as served to e