“Nay, I assure you Lord Frederick is safe,” he resumed, “and the disgrace of his blow washed entirely away, by a few drops of blood from this arm.” And he laid his hand upon his left arm, which rested in his waistcoat as a kind of sling. She cast her eyes there, and seeing where the ball had entered the coat sleeve, she gave an involuntary scream, and sunk upon the sofa. Instead of that affectionate sympathy which Miss Woodley used to exert upon her slightest illness or affliction, she now addressed her in an unpitying tone, and said, “Miss Milner, you have heard Lord Frederick is safe, you have therefore nothing to alarm you.” Nor did she run to hold a smelling bottle, or to raise her head. Her guardian seeing her near fainting, and without any assistance from her friend, was going himself to give it; but on this, Miss Woodley interfered, and having taken her head upon her arm, assured him, “It was a weakness to which Miss Milner was accustomed: that she would ring for her maid, who knew how to relieve her instantly with a few drops.” Satisfied with this, Dorriforth left the room; and a surgeon being come to examine his wound, he retired into his own chamber. CHAPTER XVI. The power delegated by the confidential to those entrusted with their secrets, Miss Woodley was the last person on earth to abuse—but she was also the last, who, by an accommodating complacency, would participate in the guilt of her friend—and there was no guilt, except that of murder, which she thought equal to the crime in question, if it was ever perpetrated. Adultery, reason would perhaps have informed her, was a more pernicious evil to society; but to a religious mind, what sound is so horrible as _sacrilege_? Of vows made to God or to man, the former must weigh the heaviest. Moreover, the sin of infidelity in the married state, is not a little softened to common understandings, by its frequency; whereas, of religious vows broken by a devotee she had never heard; unless where the offence had been followed by such examples of divine vengeance, such miraculous punishments in this world, (as well as eternal punishment in the other) as served to exaggerate the wickedness. She, who could, and who did pardon Miss Milner, was the person who saw her passion in the severest light, and resolved upon every method, however harsh, to root it from her heart—nor did she fear success, resting on the certain assurance, that however deep her love might be fixed, it would never be returned. Yet this confidence did not prevent her taking every precaution, lest Dorriforth should come to the knowledge of it. She would not have his composed mind disturbed with such a thought—his steadfast principles so much as shaken by the imagination—nor overwhelm him with those self-reproaches which his fatal attraction, unpremeditated as it was, would still have drawn upon him.