y's leg had been broken, and she had nursed him, not only with
assiduity, but with great capacity. The boy was the youngest son of the
Marchioness of Altamont; and when Lady Altamont paid a second visit to
Bowick, for the sake of taking her boy home as soon as he was fit to be
moved, her ladyship made a little mistake. With the sweetest and most
caressing smile in the world, she offered Mrs. Peacocke a ten-pound note.
"My dear madam," said Mrs. Peacocke, without the slightest reserve or
difficulty, "it is so natural that you should do this, because you cannot
of course understand my position; but it is altogether out of the
question." The Marchioness blushed, and stammered, and begged a hundred
pardons. Being a good-natured woman, she told the whole story to Mrs.
Wortle. "I would just as soon have offered the money to the Marchioness
herself," said Mrs. Wortle, as she told it to her husband. "I would have
done it a deal sooner," said the Doctor. "I am not in the least afraid of
Lady Altamont; but I stand in awful dread of Mrs. Peacocke." Nevertheless
Mrs. Peacocke had done her work by the little lord's bed-side, just as
though she had been a paid nurse.

And so she felt herself to be. Nor was she in the least ashamed of her
position in that respect. If there was aught of shame about her, as some
people said, it certainly did not come from the fact that she was in the
receipt of a salary for the performance of certain prescribed duties.
Such remuneration was, she thought, as honourable as the Doctor's income;
but to her American intelligence, the acceptance of a present of money
from a Marchioness would have been a degradation.

It certainly was said of her by some persons that there must have been
something in her former life of which she was ashamed. The Honourable
Mrs. Stantiloup, to whom all the affairs of Bowick had been of consequence
since her husband had lost his lawsuit, and who had not only heard much,
but had inquired far and near about Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke, declared
diligently among her friends, with many nods and winks, that there was
something "rotten in the state of Denmark." She did at first somewhat
imprudently endeavour to spread a rumour abroad that the Doctor had become
enslaved by the lady's beauty. But even those hostile to Bowick could not
accept this. The Doctor certainly was not the man to put in jeopardy the
respect of the world and his own standing for the beauty of any woman;
an