ow? Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do you want to spite her
by spoiling your pumps?"

"Oh, everything has been disagreeable to-night. I was tired to death
of jigging and gallanting, and that bother about the hornpipes. And
I'd got to dance with the other Miss Gunn," said Godfrey, glad of the
subterfuge his uncle had suggested to him.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself
ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false
touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere
trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since the
truth must be told, with a sense of relief and gladness that was too
strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could he not venture
now, whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest things to Nancy
Lammeter--to promise her and himself that he would always be just what
she would desire to see him? There was no danger that his dead wife
would be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry and wide
report; and as for the registry of their marriage, that was a long way
off, buried in unturned pages, away from every one's interest but his
own. Dunsey might betray him if he came back; but Dunsey might be won
to silence.

And when events turn out so much better for a man than he has had
reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has been less
foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When we
are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not
altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat
ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. Where, after all,
would be the use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and
throwing away his happiness?--nay, hers? for he felt some confidence
that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that it was cared
for: he would never forsake it; he would do everything but own it.
Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being owned by its
father, seeing that nobody could tell how things would turn out, and
that--is there any other reason wanted?--well, then, that the father
would be much happier without owning the child.

CHAPTER XIV

There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at
Batherley it was known that the dark-haired woman with the fair child,
who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away agai