rstood in that quarter,' said Cluffe, with a
mysterious sort of smile.

'I'm sure, dear Cluffe, I'm grateful as I ought, for your generous
pleading on my poor behalf, and I do prize the good will of that most
excellent lady as highly as any, and owe her, beside, a debt of
gratitude for care and kindness such as many a mother would have failed
to bestow.'

'Mother, indeed! Why, Puddock, my boy, you forget you're no chicken,'
said Cluffe, a little high.

'And to-morrow I will certainly pay her my respects,' said the
lieutenant, not answering Cluffe's remark.

So Gertrude Chattesworth, after her long agitation--often despair--was
tranquil at last, and blessed in the full assurance of the love which
was henceforth to be her chief earthly happiness.

'Madam was very sly,' said Aunt Becky, with a little shake of her head,
and a quizzical smile; and holding up her folded fan between her finger
and thumb, in mimic menace as she glanced at Gertrude. 'Why, Mr.
Mordaunt, on the very day--the day we had the pleasant luncheon on the
grass--when, as I thought, she had given you your quietus--'twas quite
the reverse, and you had made a little betrothal, and duped the old
people so cleverly ever after.'

'You have forgiven me, dear aunt,' said the young lady, kissing her very
affectionately, 'but I will never quite forgive myself. In a moment of
great agitation I made a hasty promise of secrecy, which, from the
moment 'twas made, was to me a never-resting disquietude, misery, and
reproach. If you, my dearest aunt, knew, as _he_ knows, all the
anxieties, or rather the terrors, I suffered during that agitating
period of concealment--'

'Indeed, dear Madam,' said Mordaunt--or as we may now call him, Lord
Dunoran--coming to the rescue, ''twas all my doing; on me alone rests
all the blame. Selfish it hardly was. I could not risk the loss of my
beloved; and until my fortunes had improved, to declare our situation
would have been too surely to lose her. Henceforward I have done with
mystery. _I_ will never have a secret from her, nor she from you.'

He took Aunt Becky's hand. 'Am I, too, forgiven?'

He held it for a second, and then kissed it.

Aunt Becky smiled, with one of her pleasant little blushes, and looked
down on the carpet, and was silent for a moment; and then, as they
afterwards thought a little oddly, she said,

'That censor must be more severe than I, who would say that concealment
in matters of the heart is never