expurgated edition of
the same. She had been brought up in a very dungeon of decorum by a
terrible grandmother, a rigid moralist, whom no man ever yet beheld
without a shiver; and during those first few weeks after her escape she
was probably intoxicated by the novel sense of freedom, besides which,
she was perfectly infatuated about "Reginald;" but all this could not
exculpate her when arraigned before her peers. She lived long enough to
repent and to reassert, to some extent, her lost matronly dignity, but
she died very young--let us hope in fair course of nature. She had
violated the first law of a guild more numerous and influential than
that of the Freemasons. Examples are necessary from time to time, and,
though the _Vehme-gericht_ may pity the offender, it may not therefore
linger in its vengeance. Nevertheless, my brethren, our course is clear.
Let us resign to the chatelaine the key of the letter-bag and the
censorship thereof. If, after due warning, our light-minded friends
_will_ write to us in terms that mislike that excellent and punctilious
inspectress, they must aby it in the cold looks and bitter innuendoes
which will be their portion when they come to us in the next hunting
season. Our conscience, at least, will be pure and undefiled, and we
shall pass to the end of our pilgrimage _sans peur_, though perchance,
even then, not _sans reproche_. "Servitudes," as Miggs, the veteran
vestal remarked, "is no inheritance," but there are natures who thrive
rarely in this tranquil and inglorious condition. Such men live, as a
rule, pretty contentedly to a great old age, and die in the odor of
intense respectability. Salubrious, it seems, as well as creditable to
the patient, is a _regime_ of moderate hen-pecking, only it is necessary
that he should be of the intermediate species between Socrates and
Georges Dandin.

Mrs. Danvers would certainly have indulged openly in that immoderate
exultation to which all minor prophets are prone when their predictions
chance to be verified, but this was checked by her constitutional
timidity. She was horribly afraid of the effect that the revelation
might have on her patroness; therefore what precise meaning was implied
by the complicated contortions of her countenance no mortal can guess or
know. Her sensations probably resolved themselves into an excess of
admiration for the pastor in his new character of a denouncer of
detected guilt and champion of imperiled innocence, ad