rary, I wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would therein
act as my own judgment counselled me. I think my words to you were that
'public gossip was sometimes the best security for the completion of
private engagements.'"

"Do you mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the engagement with
me, and that I should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by calling in
the public to censure them--if--if--Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice
indeed!"

"Be good enough to listen to me quietly. I have never yet showed you the
letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady Haughton, and delivered by Mr.
Vigors. That letter I will now show to you; but before doing so I must
enter into a preliminary explanation. Lady Haughton is one of those
women who love power, and cannot obtain it except through wealth and
station,--by her own intellect never obtain it. When her husband died
she was reduced from an income of twelve thousand a year to a jointure
of twelve hundred, but with the exclusive guardianship of a young son, a
minor, and adequate allowances for the charge; she continued, therefore,
to preside as mistress over the establishments in town and country;
still had the administration of her son's wealth and rank. She stinted
his education, in order to maintain her ascendancy over him. He became
a brainless prodigal, spendthrift alike of health and fortune. Alarmed,
she saw that, probably, he would die young and a beggar; his only hope
of reform was in marriage. She reluctantly resolved to marry him to a
penniless, well-born, soft-minded young lady whom she knew she could
control; just before this marriage was to take place he was killed by
a fall from his horse. The Haughton estate passed to his cousin, the
luckiest young man alive,--the same Ashleigh Sumner who had already
succeeded, in default of male issue, to poor Gilbert Ashleigh's
landed possessions. Over this young man Lady Haughton could expect no
influence. She would be a stranger in his house. But she had a niece!
Mr. Vigors assured her the niece was beautiful. And if the niece
could become Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner, then Lady Haughton would be a less
unimportant Nobody in the world, because she would still have her
nearest relation in a Somebody at Haughton Park. Mr. Vigors has his
own pompous reasons for approving an alliance which he might help to
accomplish. The first step towards that alliance was obviously to bring
into reciprocal attraction the natural charms of the young