bowing again
over the tips of Die's fingers. He had not the smallest inclination to
raise them to his lips.

"I will do my duty by him," said Diana to herself, when she was in the
sanctuary of her own bare room. And what a poor sanctuary it had been!
"It may be bad in me to have him, but what can I do? and what can he do,
for that matter? If I do my duty by him, surely some good will come of
it." Perhaps her imagination was haunted by a garbled version of the
text about him who turns a sinner from the error of his ways and covers
a multitude of sin.

II.--THE FULFILMENT.

"She's a fine woman the mistress, a rare fine woman; but she's going
the wrong way. It's the cart before the horse, and I tell you it's not
conformable; and the master, God help him, poor fellow, will never be
brought to go at the tail of the cart--never." So ruminated Gervase
Norgate's old servant, Miles, pushing back the tufts of ragged red
hair on his long head ruefully, as he sat "promiscuous" in what he was
pleased to call his pantry at Ashpound, while he contemplated with the
eye of the body his chamois skin for what he proudly denominated his
silver, and with the eye of the mind the new regime and its ruling
spirit.

"She's a fine woman," remarked also of her new niece, Miss Tabitha
Norgate, of Redwells. "She's a fine woman, a great deal too good for
him; but she oughtn't to have gone and married Jarvie, or to have
married anybody, there's the long and the short of it. She ought to have
remained single, like me. She was made to stand alone, while he wanted a
woman and as many children as she could muster to hang round his
neck--the liker a millstone the better,--he won't drown: he could not
take the straight road without a weight to ballast him and keep him
steady. If he had consulted me, I would have advised him to marry that
dawdling, whimpering Susie Lefroy, the widowed daughter of the Vicar,
with her unprovided-for orphans. Jarvie might have stepped into a young
family at once, and he would have been a kind stepfather--he might have
righted himself then. To go and marry a clever, active, handsome,
well-born woman like Die Baring. Oh! dear, dear, what folly!"

In spite of her critics, Mrs. Gervase Norgate spared no pains to acquit
herself of her obligation, and to discharge her debt at Ashpound.
Ashpound was a much more exhilarating residence than Newton-le-Moor. At
Newton-le-Moor the desolation of prodigality and immorality was
obje