to suppress.

'O! my cousin, my dear, dear cousin! spare me!' She hid her face in her
hands, yet she continued speaking in a broken voice: 'I did it for
the best. It was to suppress strife, to prevent bloodshed. I knew your
temper, and I feared for your life; yet I told my father; I told him
all: and it was by his advice that I have maintained throughout the
silence which I, perhaps too hastily, at first adopted.'

'My own dear May! spare me! I cannot mark a tear from you without a
pang. How I came to know this you wonder. It was the delirium of that
person who should not have played so proud a part in this affair, and
who is yet our friend; it was his delirium that betrayed all. In the
madness of his excited brain he reacted the frightful scene, declared
the outrage, and again avenged it. Yet, believe me, I am not tempted by
any petty feeling of showing I am not ignorant of what is considered
a secret to declare all this. I know, I feel your silence was for the
best; that it was prompted by sweet and holy feelings for my sake.
Believe me, my dear cousin, if anything could increase the infinite
affection with which I love you, it would be the consciousness that at
all times, whenever my image crosses your mind, it is to muse for my
benefit, or to extenuate my errors.

'Dear May, you, who know me better than the world, know well my heart is
not a mass of ice; and you, who are ever so ready to find a good reason
even for my most wilful conduct, and an excuse for my most irrational,
will easily credit that, in interfering in an affair in which you
are concerned, I am not influenced by an unworthy, an officious, or a
meddling spirit. No, dear May! it is because I think it better for you
that we should speak upon this subject that I have ventured to treat
upon it. Perhaps I broke it in a crude, but, credit me, not in an
unkind, spirit. I am well conscious I have a somewhat ungracious manner;
but you, who have pardoned it so often, will excuse it now. To be brief,
it is of your companion to that accursed fete that I would speak.'

'Mrs. Dallington?'

'Surely she. Avoid her, May. I do not like that woman. You know I seldom
speak at hazard; if I do not speak more distinctly now, it is because I
will never magnify suspicions into certainties, which we must do even if
we mention them. But I suspect, greatly suspect. An open rupture would
be disagreeable, would be unwarrantable, would be impolitic. The season
draws to a clos