aled imposed the
thought of her having been both a precocious and a callous young woman: a
kind of 'Delphica without the erudition,' her mind phrased it airily over
her chagrin.--And the silence of Dudley proved him to have discovered his
error in choosing such a person--he was wise, and she thanked him. She
had an envy of the ignorant-innocents adored by the young man she
cordially thanked for quitting her. She admired the white coat of armour
they wore, whether bestowed on them by their constitution or by prudence.
For while combating mankind now on Judith Marsett's behalf, personally
she ran like a hare from the mere breath of an association with the very
minor sort of similar charges; ardently she desired the esteem of
mankind; she was at moments abject. But had she actually been aware of
the facts now known?

Those wits of the virgin young, quickened to shrewdness by their budding
senses--and however vividly--require enlightenment of the audible and
visible before their sterner feelings can be heated to break them away
from a blushful dread and force the mind to know. As much as the wilfully
or naturally blunted, the intelligently honest have to learn by touch:
only, their understandings cannot meanwhile be so wholly obtuse as our
society's matron, acting to please the tastes of the civilized man--a
creature that is not clean-washed of the Turk in him--barbarously exacts.
The signor aforesaid is puzzled to read the woman, who is after all in
his language; but when it comes to reading the maiden, she appears as a
phosphorescent hieroglyph to some speculative Egyptologer; and he insists
upon distinct lines and characters; no variations, if he is to have sense
of surety. Many a young girl is misread by the amount she seems to know
of our construction, history, and dealings, when it is not more than her
sincere ripeness of nature, that has gathered the facts of life profuse
about her, and prompts her through one or other of the instincts, often
vanity, to show them to be not entirely strange to her; or haply her
filly nature is having a fling at the social harness of hypocrisy. If you
(it is usually through the length of ears of your Novelist that the
privilege is yours) have overheard queer communications passing between
girls, and you must act the traitor eavesdropper or Achilles masquerader
to overhear so clearly, these, be assured, are not specially the signs of
their corruptness. Even the exceptionally cynical are