d of your dear mother,
to take for a time in regard to you the place which had been so
unhappily left vacant by her death; and it means also that I deceived
him and betrayed that trust by being privy to an engagement on your
part, of which he disapproves, and of which he was not then aware."

"I suppose he does mean that."

"Yes, Lady Mary; that is what he means. And he means further to let
me know that as I did so foully betray the trust which he had placed
in me,--that as I had consented to play the part of assistant to you
in that secret engagement,--therefore he casts me off as altogether
unworthy of his esteem and acquaintance. It is as though he had told
me in so many words that among women he had known none more vile or
more false than I."

"Not that, Mrs. Finn."

"Yes, that;--all of that. He tells me that, and then says that there
shall be no more words spoken or written about it. I can hardly
submit to so stern a judgment. You know the truth, Lady Mary."

"Do not call me Lady Mary. Do not quarrel with me."

"If your father has quarrelled with me, it would not be fit that you
and I should be friends. Your duty to him would forbid it. I should
not have come to you now did I not feel that I am bound to justify
myself. The thing of which I am accused is so repugnant to me, that
I am obliged to do something and to say something, even though the
subject itself be one on which I would so willingly be silent."

"What can I do, Mrs. Finn?"

"It was Mr. Tregear who first told me that your father was angry with
me. He knew what I had done and why, and he was bound to tell me in
order that I might have an opportunity of setting myself right with
the Duke. Then I wrote and explained everything,--how you had told
me of the engagement, and how I had then urged Mr. Tregear that he
should not keep such a matter secret from your father. In answer to
my letter I have received--that."

"Shall I write and tell papa?"

"He should be made to understand that from the moment in which I
heard of the engagement I was urgent with you and with Mr. Tregear
that he should be informed of it. You will remember what passed."

"I remember it all."

"I did not conceive it to be my duty to tell the Duke myself, but I
did conceive it to be my duty to see he should be told. Now he writes
as though I had known the secret from the first, and as though I had
been concealing it from him at the very moment in which he was asking
me to rem