left it,--afforded tacit
evidence that whatever the disagreement between them, her conduct could
hardly have merited her exclusion from the privileges of a mother.
The guardianship might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's
indirect contamination, if not her positive control. Besides, where
guardians are appointed, money must be left; and Braddell knew that
at his death his assets would be found insufficient for his debts. Who
would be guardian to a penniless infant? He resolved, therefore, to send
his child from his roof to some place where, if reared humbly, it might
at least be brought up in the right faith,--some place which might defy
the search and be beyond the perversion of the unbelieving mother. He
looked round, and discovered no instrument for his purpose that seemed
so ready as Walter Ardworth; for by this time he had thoroughly excited
the pity and touched the heart of that good-natured, easy man. His
representations of the misconduct of Lucretia were the more implicitly
believed by one who had always been secretly prepossessed against her;
who, admitted to household intimacy, was an eye-witness to her hard
indifference to her husband's sufferings; who saw in her very request
not to betray her gentle birth, the shame she felt in her election; who
regarded with indignation her unfeeling desertion of Braddell in his
last moments, and who, besides all this, had some private misfortunes of
his own which made him the more ready listener to themes on the faults
of women; and had already, by mutual confidences, opened the hearts of
the two ancient schoolfellows to each other's complaints and wrongs. The
only other confidant in the refuge selected for the child was a member
of the same community as Braddell, who kindly undertook to search for a
pious, godly woman, who, upon such pecuniary considerations as Braddell,
by robbing his creditors, could afford to bestow, would permanently
offer to the poor infant a mother's home and a mother's care. When this
woman was found, Braddell confided his child to Ardworth, with such
a sum as he could scrape together for its future maintenance. And to
Ardworth, rather than to his fellow-sectarian, this double trust was
given, because the latter feared scandal and misrepresentation if
he should be ostensibly mixed up in so equivocal a charge. Poor
and embarrassed as Walter Ardworth was, Braddell did not for once
misinterpret character when he placed the money in his hand