od forbid my girl should ever come to Moultrassie," said Major
Bridgenorth hastily; "it has been the grave of her race. The air of the
low grounds suited them not--or there is perhaps a fate connected with
the mansion. I will seek for her some other place of abode."

"That you shall not, under your favour be it spoken, Major Bridgenorth,"
answered the lady. "If you do so, we must suppose that you are
undervaluing my qualities as a nurse. If she goes not to her father's
house, she shall not quit mine. I will keep the little lady as a pledge
of her safety and my own skill; and since you are afraid of the damp of
the low grounds, I hope you will come here frequently to visit her."

This was a proposal which went to the heart of Major Bridgenorth. It was
precisely the point which he would have given worlds to arrive at, but
which he saw no chance of attaining.

It is too well known, that those whose families are long pursued by such
a fatal disease as existed in his, become, it may be said, superstitious
respecting its fatal effects, and ascribe to place, circumstance, and
individual care, much more perhaps than these can in any case contribute
to avert the fatality of constitutional distemper. Lady Peveril was
aware that this was peculiarly the impression of her neighbour; that the
depression of his spirits, the excess of his care, the feverishness of
his apprehensions, the restraint and gloom of the solitude in which he
dwelt, were really calculated to produce the evil which most of all he
dreaded. She pitied him, she felt for him, she was grateful for former
protection received at his hands--she had become interested in the child
itself. What female fails to feel such interest in the helpless creature
she has tended? And to sum the whole up, the dame had a share of human
vanity; and being a sort of Lady Bountiful in her way (for the character
was not then confined to the old and the foolish), she was proud of
the skill by which she had averted the probable attacks of hereditary
malady, so inveterate in the family of Bridgenorth. It needed not,
perhaps, in other cases, that so many reasons should be assigned for
an act of neighbourly humanity; but civil war had so lately torn the
country asunder, and broken all the usual ties of vicinage and good
neighbourhood, that it was unusual to see them preserved among persons
of different political opinions.

Major Bridgenorth himself felt this; and while the tear of joy in his