es.
Accommodation was also found for her maid much better than that
provided for Lady Macleod's own maid. She was a hospitable, good old
woman, painfully struggling to do the best she could in the world. It
was a pity that she was such a bore, a pity that she was so hard to
cabmen and others, a pity that she suspected all tradesmen, servants,
and people generally of a rank of life inferior to her own, a pity
that she was disposed to condemn for ever and ever so many of her own
rank because they played cards on week days, and did not go to church
on Sundays,--and a pity, as I think above all, that while she was
so suspicious of the poor she was so lenient to the vices of earls,
earl's sons, and such like.

Alice, having fully considered the matter, had thought it most
prudent to tell Lady Macleod by letter what she had done in regard
to Mr Grey. There had been many objections to the writing of such a
letter, but there appeared to be stronger objection to that telling
it face to face which would have been forced upon her had she not
written. There would in such case have arisen on Lady Macleod's
countenance a sternness of rebuke which Alice did not choose
to encounter. The same sternness of rebuke would come upon the
countenance on receipt of the written information; but it would come
in its most aggravated form on the immediate receipt of the letter,
and some of its bitterness would have passed away before Alice's
arrival. I think that Alice was right. It is better for both parties
that any great offence should be confessed by letter.

But Alice trembled as the cab drew up at No. 3, Paramount Crescent.
She met her aunt, as was usual, just inside the drawing-room door,
and she saw at once that if any bitterness had passed away from that
face, the original bitterness must indeed have been bitter. She had
so timed her letter that Lady Macleod should have no opportunity of
answering it. The answer was written there in the mingled anger and
sorrow of those austere features.

"Alice!" she said, as she took her niece in her arms and kissed her;
"oh, Alice, what is this?"

"Yes, aunt; it is very bad, I know," and poor Alice tried to make a
jest of it. "Young ladies are very wicked when they don't know their
own minds. But if they haven't known them and have been wicked, what
can they do but repent?"

"Repent!" said Lady Macleod. "Yes; I hope you will repent. Poor Mr
Grey;--what must he think of it?"

"I can only hope, a