use
but thirty-six hours, this young lady had treated me with extraordinary
confidence, and there was therefore a certain demand which, as an
intimate, I might make of her. I extracted from her a pledge that she
would never say to her brother what she had just said to me; she would
leave him to form his own theory of his wife's conduct. She agreed with
me that there was misery enough in the house, without her contributing a
new anguish, and that Mrs. Ambient's proceedings might be explained, to
her husband's mind, by the extravagance of a jealous devotion. Poor Mark
came back with the doctor much sooner than we could have hoped, but we
knew, five minutes afterwards, that they arrived too late. Poor little
Dolcino was more exquisitely beautiful in death than he had been in
life. Mrs. Ambient's grief was frantic; she lost her head and said
strange things. As for Mark's--but I will not speak of that. _Basta_,
as he used to say. Miss Ambient kept her secret,--I have already had
occasion to say that she had her good points,--but it rankled in her
conscience like a guilty participation, and, I imagine, had something
to do with her retiring ultimately to a Sisterhood. And, _a propos_ of
consciences, the reader is now in a position to judge of my compunction
for my effort to convert Mrs. Ambient. I ought to mention that the
death of her child in some degree converted her. When the new book came
out--it was long delayed--she read it over as a whole, and her husband
told me that a few months before her death,--she failed rapidly
after losing her son, sank into a consumption, and faded away
at Mentone,--during those few supreme weeks she even dipped into
_Beltraffio_.

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